Larry is providing the body for this project, and it's shown in these pictures:
This guitar is a Squier in Daphne Blue. The original neck was maple with a maple fingerboard.
My job is to build the neck. It will be made from a nice piece of birdseye maple and a Madagascar Rosewood fingerboard. This variety was chosen because the grain structure and color is similar to the Brazilian Rosewood used by Fender back in 1960. This picture shows the neck assembly in the clamps with the fingerboard being glued to the bidseye maple neck blank. The truss rod channel has been cut, and the truss rod installed as well. I used a double-action truss rod from Stewart-MacDonald:
To be authentic, the truss rod must have a cris-cross adjusting nut and the access has to be at the heel end of the neck, NOT at the headstock.
One of the attributes of the 1960 Strat that larry wanted duplicated accurately was the curved edge where the fingerboard meets the headstock, as shown in this picture:
The picture above was captured from an Ebay auction. The guitar in the auction sold for $28,500. I think I'm in the wrong business. :-(
Here are some pictures I took of the neck during the build process. The first is the headstock, showing the curved upper edge of the fingerboard:
Here's the neck "In the white" and ready for finishing:
The finish is McFadden's nitrocellulose lacquer, tinted with a small amount of amber tint to give it a vintage look.
The following pictures were taken by Larry after I delivered the guitar to him:
