Making neck profile "cards"

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Steve Sawyer
Posts: 965
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2013 2:20 pm
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Making neck profile "cards"

Post by Steve Sawyer »

Embarking on my first neck-shaping, I wanted some profiles to keep my work somewhere within the bounds of something playable. It's pretty easy to find neck profile images. I had several PDF drawings (they're the best) of Telecaster necks, several of which included profiles for the 1st and 12th frets. The trouble was, the drawing I used to make my neck template was a scrunch wider than the profiles I had.

So, here's what I did:
  • I opened the PDF, zoomed in on each neck profile, and did a screen-grab. I use Screenpresso (a free open-source product that works well, but if you have Snagit that works great too). This gave me a hi-resolution JPG image for each profile.
  • I opened each profile image in a program called BigPrint that's offered by Matthias Wandel on his woodgears.ca website. It costs $22 and is worth every penny. You "scale" the drawing by selecting two points on the image and specifying how far those two points are in a full-scale image. In this case, I specified the neck width to match that of my neck, then printed each image.
  • I used to buy gas using "gift" cards to support my sons scout troop, and always saved them. I also steal the room "keys" any time we travel. They make great scrapers, glue-spreaders, shims etc. I took two of them, and traced around the printed images with an x-acto knife.
  • I ran several beads of thin CA glue on each card, paying particular attention to the edges and around the neck profile, then positioned the cut-out paper profile onto the card, and spritzed on some accelerator.
  • I roughly cut out the neck profiles with some shears, then got the card to the final shape using an oscillating spindle sander.
  • I marked the cards to indicate the guitar, position and neck width.
Voila!
Profile CardsS.jpg
==Steve==
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Jim McConkey
Posts: 1061
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:00 pm
Location: Way north of Baltimore, MD

Re: Making neck profile "cards"

Post by Jim McConkey »

Great use for old cards!

Punch a hole in the corner and group them altogether with a little chain, kind of like a feeler gauge, and you have easily separate sets for different necks.
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Glenn Cummings
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:12 am

Re: Making neck profile "cards"

Post by Glenn Cummings »

I used to keep casino cards. ...
Another use for these type of cards is a quick mix board for epoxy, using a strip cut from another card for a mixer and applicator.
Bob Francis
Posts: 582
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:28 pm

Re: Making neck profile "cards"

Post by Bob Francis »

Jim McConkey wrote:Great use for old cards!

Punch a hole in the corner and group them altogether with a little chain, kind of like a feeler gauge, and you have easily separate sets for different necks.
Clever on both the cards and their storage!
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