How bad is this?

[johnnyg]

So I was merrily sanding away on this neck and it was looking good. Then I tacked the fretboard back on and saw I took a little too much off at the nut on the treble side. The pic exaggerates it but it's about .008".

Anything I can do here or have I worked hours only to have a baseball bat?

IMG_0018.JPG (39.23 KiB) Viewed 1428 times

[Tim Benware]

Did you double check your measurements to be sure it was in fact too narrow? You could also just center the FB on the neck and there would be .004" on either side. y adjusting the string spacing on the nut you may not even notice the difference.

[johnnyg]

I was in the final sanding stage so I don't have room to move the fretboard without throwing off the center line. I have an idea to make the bass side match and then adjust the taper of the FB to blend in. This would leave me with a 1 5/8 nut width. Is that going to be too narrow or will I still have enough left to play with string spacing?

[ken cierp]

No big deal -- just center the board and taper/blend the edge of the board leaving it desired width on the fret side. Plenty guitars have the FB blended into the neck. Matter of fact I think you will like the feel of the neck vs one with the common 90 degree edge.

[John Link]

I agree with Ken's suggestion. The 90 degree angle works fine in architecture, but is over-rated when it comes to dealing with human anatomy.

[johnnyg]

Thanks for the great advice! This is the route I will go. To make sure I fully understand this, do these steps sound right?

1. Shave the side of the neck to the same amount on both sides and the length of the neck.
2. Then taper the sides to meet the new neck width.

Should I glue on the fretboard prior to tapering? That seems reasonable to me.

[ken cierp]

The last thing you want to do is shave more material off the neck ---- all the shaving/blending is done to the fingerboard