Truss rod bonded into a neck

The Ridgehawk neck is made differently, it has a back angled headstock as found on most Gibson guitars. Tho achieve this an angled 'scarf' joint is made using another jig and the router

This shot gives a better idea of how the jig works to get the correct 17 deg angle .

The back angled neck of the Ridgehawk

The Fretboard is now checked against the neck to make sure all the dimensions are correct before glueing it on. This is the Thinline neck.

At this point on the Ridgehawk the diamond shaped pearl inlays are put on the fretboard.  On the other guitars which have just round markers it's left 'til later.  The reason I do it now on the Ridgehawk is that there's more chance of a mistake being made,  and taking off a resin bonded fretboard isn't easy!  

The fretboard bonded to the neck

This shows the marking out of the headstock shape for a Ridgehawk. The pointed headstock design is a diversion from the shape of the original Blueshawk. This is because I'm putting a Bigsby Tremolo on this guitar, and the pointed design allows the machine heads to be placed in a position which gives a straighter string pull over the nut.  Doing this will help stop the strings binding up on the nut and causing the usual tuning problems associated with Bigsbys

The neck is then bandsawn into shape

The fretboard is then radiused - in this case at 9.5"

Next job is to drill the holes in the headstock for the tuners. This guitar is having Kluson vintage type tuners fitted, here they're fitted into a piece of scrap wood to check my  measuring is all ok.

Once the positions of the tuners are marked out the 10mm holes can be drilled into the headstock

The tuners temporarily fitted to check the alignment

The headstock now has to be reduced in thickness to 1/2".  This is it cut down with the router which leaves it stepped at the nut end

This shot shows the line where the neck is to blend in with the headstock  

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