I brought my lumber to my father’s workshop in Maine so I could use his thickness planer, his jointer, his large belt sander, and his help.
I had cut the maple down into two pieces for the neck and one longer piece that strips would need to be cut from for forming the rim. It would have been better to keep the maple in one piece for sending it through the thickness planer because it tends to gouge the wood at the beginning and end when the piece is not held down by both rollers.
After the broad surfaces were cleaned up in the planer we straightened the edges with the jointer.
Running the maple for the neck through the jointer
I needed to cut the ebony into three thin pieces. A 3/16in thick piece for the fretboard, a piece about 1/8in thick that would be glued in-between two pieces of maple to form the neck, and one piece about 1/16in thick for a veneer on the peghead. I was not sure how well any of this was going to work and I was worried I was going to end up with a lot of expensive ebony scrap. I was able to cut the ebony into strips with the bandsaw, keeping them a little thicker than the final dimension. I sent the pieces for the fretboard and for the neck through the planer, hoping it would not tear them apart. It did do some damage, but I was able to clean everything up with the belt sander. The piece for the peghead was too thin for the planer, so I cut it as neatly as possible on the bandsaw and used the belt sander to bring it to the final thickness.
Cutting the ebony on the bandsaw
The maple for the rim needed to be cut into 3 strips about 1/4in thick and 3in wide. First we cut the maple to width on the table saw, then we cut the strips on the table saw using two passes for each strip. The blade was raised a little more than 1 1/2in. After the first pass, the piece was flipped end for end and run through again to complete the cut. The strips were cleaned up on the belt sander.
Cutting strips for the rim
Sanding strips for the rim
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