Shaping the Neck | Now that the neck is attached right, time to take it off and shape it. Since I have a few skills will chisels and rasps, I have looked forward to this. I also had some ideas of how I wanted to make this neck - kind of a hybrid between a classical neck (wider and flatter) and a typical steel string neck.

The specs for the width of the neck are set largely by the width at the nut and the 14th fret where the neck joins the body. For the nut (the end down by the tuners - the narrowest part of the neck) I knew I wanted it to be 1 13/16 (that is for all the guitar geeks out there). At the 14th fret it would be about 60mm wide. The profile of the neck (looking along its length) can be carved in a number of different ways:

My goal is to shoot for the "soft v" (number 2 above). So with a few ideas in mind, time to get out the shinto rasp, chisels, round rasps, and sanding blocks.

I started with the heel end and roughed out its shape. You can do whatever you want here, and I was free forming.

This brings me to one of my new favorite tools: the shinto rasp.

This rasp is made from hack-saw blades woven together and allows you to remove large volumes of material quickly. Because of the weave design, it doesn't "clog" like traditional rasps can. I am learning that Japanese hand tools are the proverbial "bomb" - especially for precise, detail work.

I used this rasp to cut down to my target thickness for the neck around the 1st fret and the 10th fret. These two reference points allow me to quickly rough out the basic form of the neck.

You can see the two deep, box-shaped rasp cuts that help me target the depth of the neck.

So after the target areas are roughed out, it is basically a lot of rasping, chiseling, sanding, shaping and a guitar neck begins to appear. 

Once I get the guitar together, I will come back and fine tune the shaping of the neck. Things are moving along fast at this point and the end is in sight. Next steps: attach the neck, attach the bridge, and initial finishing. Then we will be ready to string it up and see if it holds together.