Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 Build Part 3

So, I move on to the practice neck.  It's a piece of 3/4"x3" maple.  Nothing special (ie. not quarter or rift-sawn), just a nice hard piece of maple.  Because I want more strength in the neck so as to avoid catastrophic neck breakage that the one-piece mahogany Les Pauls are notorious for, I am trying to cut a 15 degree angle on the neck and make the angled headstock using a scarf joint.  How to do that on a band saw was my first problem.  The worthless rip fence that came with the Ryobi 3" cut, 9" depth saw would only angle between 90 and 45 so I clamped a miter box to the fence, angled the fence to 75 and used the perpendicular side to hold the maple board against.  I made the cut, but it was awful.

I wondered why the cut was not even vertically until I more closely examined the rip fence.  Which lazy company makes a rip fence that is not vertically square!?!?!?!

So, I had to make my own.  This worked much better and allowed me to clamp the board to the jig.

This time, the cut was much better.  A little work on the belt sander to make the sides flush and I was ready for gluing.

So hard for cameras to focus properly on wood-work.  Not enough contrast.

Glued up now.  Scarf joints are terrifying.  They do nothing but slip.  Barring having 30 clamps available, all I could do was clamp it best I could, muscle the pieces of wood back together after it slipped all over the place.  Finally, it held.  It is drying right now, so it's still possible the whole thing slipped out again.

That is all for now.


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