Dual Action Truss Rod install

I finished another part of the guitar. It isn't the most romantic or pretty piece, in fact you will never see it once the guitar is finished, it is hidden.

However, it is a vital part of the guitar, It is in the neck, it allows you to bend the neck in either direction to give the correct amount of string spacing. I am including a couple pics because I know you want to see it before it is covered by the fretboard.

I made my own router bit from a 1/4" router bit that I have laying around. As we all know, the slot needed to be 5.5 millimeters instead of the 1/4". A difference of approximately 3.4 hundreths of an inch. It doesn't seem like much however you want it snug to prevent and rattle. Also, there are several places where i put a drop of silicone in the groove, again, to prevent rattling. As you can see i protected the wood on the sides of the groove with tape before applying silicone because i want to make sure there is no residue on the wood when gluing the fretboard on.

I am glad to be done with this, now I am ready to start the shaping of the neck. Stay tuned.

Old and New Tools

I've been reading some other instrument builders blogs, some of them talk about the need to use spokeshaves and other ancient tools that builders in the past have used.


I think the only reason they want to use a spokeshave is so they can say " I used a spokeshave on this ". In my opinion, the only reason the old builders used spokshaves is because electricity hadn't been discovered yet. They were intelligent people, they would have used Dremel tools and belt sanders if they had the chance. True, many of them did beautiful work, but, todays builders do equal and better work using state of the art tools.

I remember years ago working for one of my first employers in the building trades. He was using a handsaw on a 6 inch x 24" beam. I asked him why he wasn't using power tools to do that. He replied that that was they way he learned in the old country and if it was good enough for them it was good enough for him. I found that terribly illogical, but, he was the boss and I let him do it.

Seems to me, that is like having something frozen that needs to be thawed,Not using a microwave oven, but building a fire out of logs because great-grandma did it that way. I will continue to use modern tools and will gladly let others turn up their nose because they used obsolete tools.

Answered Question

I have been slacking a little the last week. Not because i didn't want to work on my guitar but rather, HOW to work on my guitar when i needed a certain tool. I had an idea how the make the tool I needed because I am too cheap to buy a $45 tool to work on one guitar.

The problem is , when i tried making a prototype it was not working the way I wanted it to. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. It was driving me a little nuts to tell the truth.

This morning at about 5:30 I woke up and had the answer all figured out. It turns out that I was just being stupid and not looking at the problem from the right direction. I guess I do my best thinking while I am sleeping. Maybe I should write a list of stuff I need to figure out and read it before going to sleep.

I have no doubt that the answer I came up with will work, 'cause like I said, I was being stupid. But, if it's not correct, I will sleep on it.