neck shaping

i want to start my first build of a solid body electric nylon string ukulele, but wherever i look for a diy instructional, when it comes to the neck it always just shows you a block of wood and says take a filler or other tool and shape your neck and then tada the next picture is this beautiful shaped neck. they never show you how to do it or tell you any guide lines for what your trying to do and how to get there. the most info i ever got was it should be comfortable in your hand. but i still don't know what i am trying to go for or how to make a symmetrical neck looking neck. some help pleeeaasse???

I have two wood rasps, a coarse one with a curved face, and a finer one. First I use the bandsaw to knock the edges off. Then it is really just a case of having at it with the rasps to rough out a shape. Then I take a coarse grit sandpaper and smooth it out a bit, then get it out if the clamps to have a feel of the shape. I make some pencil marks then back in the clamp and more rasping. Repeat until the feel is right, then spend ages with finer sandpaper. I suppose you could make cardboard templates of the profile at different places taken from another neck if you want guides. But remeber when feeling the neck to take the addition of the fretboard into account.

I believe Pete Howlet did an excellent couple of vids showing in detail how to carve a neck...I'll try and find em for you (seeing as I'm doing nowt else at the moment)

Well....it really is that simple. The neck profile isn't that critical on narrow neck instruments as a guitar.
Just mark a center line on the back of the neck. Then mark the 1st and 10th fret positions (or the highest fret before the heel starts). Get the thickness right at those fret points.
I usually do a C shape neck so I start by shaving at a 45deg angle on each side until I'm about 1/8" from the top side of the neck. Then work more toward the back center line at 30 deg...then 20 deg etc until I get to the line. Then I blend in the sides.
You can cut profile templates for the fret points to help...but it's pretty easy to see and feel if you're symmetrical and have a smooth shape along the whole neck

Well I had look and found three of Petes videos that should give you some help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7iSWEUuqiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL6-LmYjwe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC9KSVb0e80

I also made a couple Videos of neck making .. But my methods are not very traditional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IaX0cJklPA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8PrWCjwaY
http://s219.photobucket.com/user/sh...rt=3&o=0&_suid=139254891746808532756150282104

And then there's Mike Da Silva..Who i've heard is very good at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTcddGUB9gA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj8F_r-2USM

And finaly one from Ernie :music:.......And now I'm off for a cup of Tea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJQsOmwXYnU
Every block of wood has a uke neck inside it and it is the task of the Luthier to discover it. Michelangelo

ksquine said:

Well....it really is that simple. The neck profile isn't that critical on narrow neck instruments as a guitar.
Just mark a center line on the back of the neck. Then mark the 1st and 10th fret positions (or the highest fret before the heel starts). Get the thickness right at those fret points.
I usually do a C shape neck so I start by shaving at a 45deg angle on each side until I'm about 1/8" from the top side of the neck. Then work more toward the back center line at 30 deg...then 20 deg etc until I get to the line. Then I blend in the sides.
You can cut profile templates for the fret points to help...but it's pretty easy to see and feel if you're symmetrical and have a smooth shape along the whole neck

Click to expand...

your description seems the most straight forward i just have a few questions to clarify. what does it mean "then mark the first and 10th fret positions and get the thickness right at those fret points"? and also "so I start by shaving at a 45deg angle on each side until I'm about 1/8" from the top side of the neck. Then work more toward the back center line at 30 deg"? thanks

thanks a lot for all the answers you have been giving me to all of my threads its really helping me get prepared for my first build

The most important part of your first build is to start it. What newbies seem to want most is to have their work admired, which usually comes easily from friends whether they know a good piece of work or not. They don't want to hurt your feelings. My first necks were too square, because I didn't want to weaken the wood. My first electric guitar necks were left about half done, had wide facets instead of a roundness, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. I played those necks and was quite satisfied with them. Then a guy came into my shop, played my second banjo for about 30 seconds, and said, "You don't play banjo, do you?" Meaning that obvious things were wrong that I didn't know about. Then a good friend who could play his butt off tried one of my electric guitars. "I hate the way you shape your necks. I HATE it," he said. His words didn't hurt so much as knowing that I still wasn't on the right track, that I couldn't just do whatever I wanted to and expect people to play my instruments, however happy I was with them.

Then it occurred to me that an instrument neck is very much like the forearm of a rifle stock, which I'd already been taught to make. After that it was smooth sailing. In fact, the first how-to article I wrote for "American Lutherie" was about facet carving a neck, a simple process that gives you a lot of control over the shape. Years later I found that Jim Williams had described the same process in "A Guitar Maker's Manual".


You could mock up necks out of softwood, or even hard Styrofoam, until you gained a sense of what you were doing. Its not that hard, just a bit befuddling at first.

This would be one of the most difficult tasks for students to come to grips with, so I've come up with a way for them to visualise what it is we are going to be doing. Breaking it down into steps that are easy to understand.

I pencil in a centre line down the back of the neck, then put two more lines down it. One a little more than 1/2 way down the depth of the neck towards the fret board, the other offset from the centre line. The first task is to take a rasp, spoke shave or whatever you are using and removing that triangle shape of wood from the neck.

After that is done on both sides, we move onto repeating that process with two more triangle shape wedges on either side of the first one we removed.

From there a great deal of what isn't a neck has been removed, and what's left can be further refined.

Hope the picture I knocked up explains it better.

thanks allen this is really great

Allen said:

This would be one of the most difficult tasks for students to come to grips with, so I've come up with a way for them to visualise what it is we are going to be doing. Breaking it down into steps that are easy to understand.

I pencil in a centre line down the back of the neck, then put two more lines down it. One a little more than 1/2 way down the depth of the neck towards the fret board, the other offset from the centre line. The first task is to take a rasp, spoke shave or whatever you are using and removing that triangle shape of wood from the neck.

After that is done on both sides, we move onto repeating that process with two more triangle shape wedges on either side of the first one we removed.

From there a great deal of what isn't a neck has been removed, and what's left can be further refined.

Hope the picture I knocked up explains it better.

View attachment 63903

Click to expand...

Allen, that's the most concise description of facet carving I've yet seen. Conversely, if you had a neck you liked, you could measure it with a contour gauge at the first and ninth frets (fr'instance),trace them and draw a box around them, then lay out your facet lines wherever you want (as long as they are tangent), and start carving. By making ever closer facets you are bound to out close.

I'll borrow from something I saw about sculpturing: Start with a block of wood, and remove everything that isn't a neck.

Here is Gordon talking about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ_7aE0SQzM

Get a cheap softwood and go at it, preferably with the mighty drawknife.

Buy a Lathe

That's what they did in around 1820. Then slit down the middle. 2 for the price of 1. Nowt new there.

Timbuck said:

Buy a Lathe

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wouldnt a lathe capable of cutting hard wood be expensive?

dave the slave said:

wouldnt a lathe capable of cutting hard wood be expensive?

Click to expand...

It's not the lathe that cuts wood ..it's the tool

Michael N. said:

That's what they did in around 1820. Then slit down the middle. 2 for the price of 1. Nowt new there.

Click to expand...

This is True..Thats where I first got the idea..When I saw a sample in a museum ...Only I slit down the middle first.

Here is an interesting video on neck shaping this is a banjo neck being made..I find it a slow method but it is a neat way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvbN4sh2XKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaE50WnF4c