So, after you glue the fretboard, you carve the neck. I leave the neck to set overnight before carving.
Neck carving is a nice enough job. I don’t use any templates, rather I use the method Stefan Sobell taught me – divide the neck with a series of lines. Carve a flats between those lines then blend the flat sections into a curve. Sounds easy. And it isn’t hard once you’ve done it a few times.
Mind, I’m now following the fashions a bit and am going for a flattish broad heel rather that a pointed one. I really didn’t like the look of them for a long time, but they are practical, and yes, my tastes have changed. Customers almost never stipulate what type of heel they want, so I do experiment a bit with the form.
This New Guinea rosewood is lovely stuff to work with. Its not a wood I ever came across in England or Germany. Very impressive stuff. The heel cap is a leftover from the bog oak fretboard – it has the same gentle radius the fretboard has. The head veneers are both ebony.
