Larry's Hippie Strat

This project was the result of selling an inlaid fingerboard on Ebay. I bought it thinking I would use it for the Acoustic Guitar project, but decided to go with a morre conventional fingerboard for that one. Larry bought the fingerboard, and we worked out an arrangement wherein I'm building him a 69-vintage Stratocaster-type guitar using a body that he provided with floral designs painted on it, and I am building the neck around that fingerboard.

This is the neck under construction. Here's what's completed so far: Cut the truss rod slot and set it up for headstock adjustment. This required: Precutting the headstock area to 5/8" thickness. Cutting the truss rod slot 1/4" wide by 3/8" deep down the centerline of the neck, stopping at the location of the nut slot Drilling a 1/4" diameter hole from the headstock to the end of the truss rod slot to allow a hex wrench to be inserted I've cut the fret slots and glued the fingerboard to the neck blank Then I cut the neck to shape	Another picture of the neck in its rough-cut form:
Acouple of days later, and the neck has been carved and sanded. Also, the fingerboard has been sanded with 220, 320, and 600-grit sandpaper to give it (and the inlays) a nice polish.	The other thing that I've done to prepare the fingerboard is to use a triangular file to widen the fret slots a little wherever a pieco of inlaid shell crosses one of the fret slots. This technique was recommended by members of the Rec.Music.Makers.Builders newsgroup as a way to avoid chipping the inlays during fret installation The back side of the neck:
This is the body that Larry bought for this guitar--it came with the matching pickguard. I have installed the hardware & electronics already, which came from a mid-90's Made-In-Mexico Strat that Larry traded in exchange for the work on this guitar.
In this picture I put the neck in place to show what it's going to look like:
This is a closer shot of the neck joint area of the guitar:
I made some more progress on the neck today. Larry and I were concerned about the inlays on the fingerboard--would the barbs on the frets crack or chip the shell? So I asked about this issue on the Rec.Music.Makers.Builders newsgroup and got some suggestions on how to prevent the inlay shell from being damaged. The suggestions were: 1) crimp the barbs on the fret tangs before installing the frets, and 2) use a triangular file to bevel the edges of the fret slots a little, particularly where the inlays cross the fret slots. So I did both, and it worked perfectly--all of the frets went in with absolutely no damage to the inlay materials. Here's the result: In the above picture you can also see the side dots at the 3rd, 5th, and 7th fret positions.
This is another shot of the neck showing the entire fingerboard with the frets installed:
This last set of pictures were taken by Larry just recently:

All Pictures and Text (c) Copyright 2007 by Stephen Cyr Last updated January 12, 2007

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