3d STL Guitar Neck - Workflow Question

Easel
1

So I’m to the point I want to be with my ultimate goal of carving guitar bodies and necks. Need to understand what a guitar neck workflow would look like for front and back. Not looking to design right now - just carve an imported STL file.

  1. Carve top at the very top of the wood piece???
  2. Flip wood over for back carve
  • How do I make sure to line up my x & y axis?
  • Do I have another project/window for the other side in easel?
  • I’m sure that I’ll carve the back all the way down - with tabs. That’s got to be difficult to line up??
  • When I flip over the wood - how do I make sure it’s perfectly level on the other side.
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2

I’m going to link to some build threads I did and you can see how I approach all this stuff. There are neck building threads there too, one is done on the cnc.

I draw using the centerline of the neck at the end of the neck as x0,y0. I set up a fence on the left of the table surface to align the wood parallel to the Y axis. One machined edge of the blank goes against the fence. I use a dremel point bit to locate, 0,0, and the top of the material is zero as well. I change the bit out to a straight bit.

I’ve found that doing a perimeter cut before the carve of the neck makes for less chip out. I do the perimeter cut and holes with a 1/4 bit on a Fender style neck. I use a 1/2" cove bit ( ball nose) for the carve.

On the other side of the neck I use the ball nose to cut the radius, transitions, and peghead thickness. I scribe fret slots, but cut them on a fret slotting system.

I don’t use tabs but leave about 1/32-1/16 or so of wood in the blank to punch out or cut out with a knife and clean up with a scraper or abrasive and block.

There are lots of way to end up with a neck and body.

Using an X carve to create a 1960 Melody Maker Tribute guitar | Telecaster Guitar Forum (tdpri.com)

Press a button and out pops a guitar build. | Telecaster Guitar Forum (tdpri.com)

How to model a tele style neck for CNC work… new and improved…same low price | Telecaster Guitar Forum (tdpri.com)

Let’s make a neck ( volume 2) | Page 9 | Telecaster Guitar Forum (tdpri.com)

The LeS-G | Telecaster Guitar Forum (tdpri.com)

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