Clunky Necks: I'm Hit or Miss

I just made my first one piece neck. I've always made stepped heal necks and decided to try a one piece neck.

I have always had a problem with one piece necks for two serious reasons:

1: It is extremely wasteful of wood
2: The run out at the nut area is weak structurally.

Anyway, I love this method. Zip zip. Cut out the shape and zip zip to profile.

My question is: When it comes to neck profiling I have done it by "feel". Well feel just doesn't cut it. I made nice necks and clunky necks and I suddenly realized I don't have a clue. "Feel" just doesn't cut it. Do you luthiers have a model or something you work off of? This is an area that totally flumoxes me.

Here are my measurements on my roughed-in current neck. I think they are clunky:

First fret: 0.74 inch or 19 mm
Fifth fret: .87 ot 22 mm
Seventh fret: 91 or 24
Tenth fret: 1.04 or 26

I know these are too thick, but what is the target on a tenor neck? Picture below.

From the horse's mouth:

Here are some dimensions of our tenor uke neck for you -

Nut - 1 3/8"

Fretboard width -
1.417" 1st fret
1.679" 9th fret

Neck depth (taken from spine of neck to crown of fingerboard not including fret) -
.6432" 1st fret
.6859" 3rd fret
.7346" 5th fret
.8166" 9th fret

Hope this helps!

Mark Althans
Collings Guitars

Of course, these dimensions aren't mandatory but they're a pretty good place to start and will get you in the ballpark. For example, a 1 3/8" nut is at the bottom end of the scale and a lot of players will be more comfortable with a nut in the range of 1.4" to 1.5".

I don't know if this will help it's the dimensions I took from an original 1930's Martin concert neck...It was posted last year but Photobucket removed it
concert neck by Ken Timms, on Flickr

I make all my ukes 36mm wide at the nut unless someone specifies otherwise.

12mm thick not including fret board at the nut/first fret.
16mm thick not including fret board at the transition into the heel.
Fret board taper varies depending on scale length, but all of them have a 42mm string spacing center to center at the saddle. Fret board offsets of 4mm from string centres at nut and saddle give you the taper.

Thanks all. I took the neck down today to what seems to be the consensus. It looks and feels right. To me at least. Measurements with fretboard in place which runs about ~ 20-25 mil (0.20 - 0.25 inch) or 5 to 6 mm.

1 fret: ~ 70 mil / ~ 17 mm
5 fret: ~ 77 mil / ~ 19 mm
7 fret: ~ 81 mil / ~ 21 mm
10 fret: ~ 94 mil / ~ 24 mm

I've been busy taking notes, as I've always just "winged" it in the past, when it comes to the side profile, anyway.

Bob