I have spent this weekend working on the neck for my EGS demo guitar. My original thought was to use an old Ibanez Allan Holdsworth neck and replace the fretboard with a fanned fret version that I would make myself. But as it turned out, the Ibanez neck had somewhat of a back-bow and I also got a truss-rod idea that I wanted to try out.
I had this old blank laying around from my Kebbon Bass build. It is what was left over from underneath the neck of this through the body construction. So, it’s been drying and settling for about 20 years…
Now, I have nice fret-slot jigs for regular scale lengths, but not for fanned frets. So, I made a really simple one with a CAD-printout as a base and an aluminum saw guide that I moved around and clamped in each position. Here is a tip for cutting fret slots to the right depth: I used bamboo barbecue skewers on each side of the fretboard. As the saw came to the right depth, it would roll on the bamboo skewers rather than cut through them. My saw is a Japanese razor saw, which is incredibly sharp, so this really helped.
I created a routing template and cut the shape of the neck. Prior to this, I had milled it to the right thickness in the metal mill that use for the hardware.
Quick test of alinment.
Here is a picture of the truss-rod arrangement. This will be the subject of a separate post.
So now the fretboard is setting overnight.
