With the fingerboard and headstock complete, the sides of the neck can be removed with the Ryoba. The neck is then ready to be carved to shape.
When I set about building my first few guitars, there was just enough life left in the old shintzel-bank to carve a neck for each one. But it was really on it's last legs, having sat outside for a while, and wasn't well suited to the necks.
This time around I decided to improve on my lot just a bit. I made myself this little shaving pony based on info provided
online. It is in Ash, which is perhaps the best for this purpose, as it is very strong. Pivots are turned of White Oak.
Having sized it to the bench, the long legs provide incredible clamping strength with the slightest foot pressure. I also purchased a carvers drawknife. The combination makes for some very easy carving.
I start carefully, and only gradually bring out the shape I am looking for.
I check against the straight edge almost obsessively throughout.
The neck is taken down as far as possible with the knife,
and then I clean things up with the rasp.
At the sanding table the neck is worked with the successive grits, at 150 the rasp comes back into play. Note how the nut end is still thicker here as the taper is fine tuned.
The contour is checked against itself by flipping the guage and leveling the high spots.
At the nut, great care is taken to bring the neck down as slim as possible. The calipers tell you when to stop, then you go just a bit more. It's knuckle biting, but I want these babys fine.
After countless hours I have four necks. All with their own feel, each one unique, yet all born of the same eye. To be honest, my neck is still evolving in terms of the shape and feel that I am looking for. I have handled relatively few actual necks at this point, but I am intimately familiar with dimensions of the most popular necks as published by their manufacturers, as well as published contour shapes. Having been playing for a couple of years, now, I also have more of an idea where I want things to go from a players feel. The three necks on the left are mostly influenced by the dimensions and contours for an Ibanez Wizard neck. Slim, flat and with a shallow arc. The 3 piece maple neck on the right I have left more full round, aproaching that of a classic Les Paul style neck, but a bit slimmer overall.
The headstock is cleaned up with sanding blocks, note the wood nut to protect the fingerboard end from damage.
Then it's time to radius the fingerboards. I use a 12" radius block that I made over circular forms. It is faced with paper and each neck is taken down carefully against the straight edge. Neck relief is let in, but almost immeasurably. I am looking for the thinnest possible line of light along the straight edge. With the shop darkened it is like an eclipse along the dark surface of the fingerboard.
At some point in the sanding process I remember the holes for the tuning machines.
At this point we can install the side dots. I wait until after radiusing the fingerboards so that the dots may be centered accurately in the finished binding. Thin strips of walnut and flame maple are drawn through a metal plate. Successively smaller holes produce a smooth wood wire of 5/64" diameter. This is a very tedious process.
Holes are drilled at the appropriate frets and the plugs are glued in place. Once the glue cures they are sheared off and sanded flush.
The finished neck is clamped to the body. Red cotton thread makes for a very precise alignment along the center line of the guitar. The mortise is marked out with a knife edge.
This jig is used to cut the neck mortise. It is slightly under sized to allow for hand fitting of the neck tenon. It produces a very accurate neck angle of about 2 1/2 degrees. For the first cut I plunge about a 1/32" shy of the finished depth. Once the neck is fitted I go back and shave off a bit more with the same jig. This allows me to bring the neck down carefully, checking against bridge height and exposed binding as I go.
The body end of the mortise is under cut slightly to accomodate the angled tenon. The sides are pared with care just to the line.
The resulting mortise and tenon joint is exceptionally tight and devoid of any play.
The new jigs are sweet. The PAF's fit with a little play, and the P-90 routs are just undersized for a final hand fit of the pickups. The bottom of the jig is sprayed with adhesive and allowed to dry. This makes for a non slip surface that won't stick permanently.
Once the pickup cavities are routed the bridge and stop tail piece bushing holes are located and drilled with the aid of a thick block jig. Of course the bushings are metric and my drill index, imperial, so I make the holes undersized and rasp them to fit. This is actually a good thing, as it makes for a very snug fit. The bushing are pressed into place after shellac and must stay put without adhesive.
The two sets of cross hairs on body and jig make for some very accurate hole placement.
But then again, we perform this check on the location mark about 50 times before we drill. Very nerve racking stuff, this. It will pay off with perfect intonation later on, though.
Drilling for the grounding wire is a little tricky. I use a gouge to make a starting depression and to relieve the corner into the access hole in the instrument cavity.
Then with an extra long bit and a scrap of veneer to protect the top, the hole is made very carefully into the bridge bushing hole. Later we will route the grounding wire to be held in place by the bridge post bushing.
The instrument hole is bored with another jig, but not all the way through. A thin layer is left to support the waste and the knife finishes the cut cleanly.
The inside edge is cleaned up with a chainsaw file.
The cavities for the P-90's are finished by hand for a perfect fit. Slightly undercut with the gouge and worked with the chainsaw file and sandpaper...
so that the covers just slip into place with the final sanding.
At this point we can now veneer the back panels. These are cut to rough shape with the fret saw and scraped smooth at the seams.
The bodies go back in the press for the last time as the backs are laminated in place.
Starting with 60 grit the roundover is perfected and the edge is taken out throught the finer grits. The finish shaping of the body has to be done by hand as it is too easy to go right through the bindings with machine tools. There is something special about a hand shaped edge. To my eyes a machine shaped edge just won't do. It is, by no means, a quick and easy task, however.
The holes in the neck plate are marked on the body and the holes drilled by hand. A scrap of ply is clamped in place to prevent tear out. Although most folks would expect to see a drill press here, I do not wish for the holes in the body to be at 90 degrees. In a process called draw boring, I angle the holes just slightly to direct the clamping pressure of the screws and draw the neck into the mortise.
Note how the exit hole is at the top inside limit of the neck plate layout line. When screwed tight the neck will be drawn into the mortise. Not that there is slack to fill, but the whole assembly is just all that much more secure.
With the neck clamped in place the screw holes are drilled. Because the drill bit for the threaded portion of the hole is smaller than the shank hole in the body there is a bit of play when starting the hole in the neck. This is put to use, positioning it at the top, to further increase the draw effect. Once started the bit is kept perpendicular to the neck line at the mortise.
With the neck bolted on the contours of the join are finished carved and sanded smooth. 
At this point things are starting to look pretty good. If you only knew how far they yet have to go....
The purfling cutter is again used to score for the rebate.
To keep the purfling cutter blade sharp it is honed repeatedly throughout the scoring process. I use polishing compound on window glass. This is also how I keep my chisels razor sharp. What am I talking about? Razors aren't that sharp.
The waste is carefully pared away in specific stages. At all times the chisel is never allowed to face good wood. First I shave off the corner.
Then I create a new rebate with the chisel, just within the scored lines. 
This is carved deeper and wider until a paper thin layer is left against each scored edge. This is carefully pared away with the chisel starting in the scored line.
I use a little trick to carve the point on the cutaway. Prior to carving the rebate and several times during, I saturate the fibers with superglue. Just a drop or two will soak in right at the tip and you will never loose any cross grain. But you still have to be careful.
You get into a rhythm with the carving of the rebate. It is pretty intense work, since you can't make any mistakes, but it is very satisfying.
The body bindings are made just like my veneer, ripped on the table saw with a 1 1/4" sawmill blade and a guide fence.
Then thicknessed in the sander. I make the bindings slightly thicker than my standard 3/32" veneer so there is a bit more left to work with in final contouring.
Sawn into strips that will fit just proud of the rebate, they are allowed to soak in water for a couple of days. This set up with the bottom of a torn dust collector bag works well.
The wet strips are run quickly over the hot pipe and when flexible they are tacked down to a tracing of the actual rebate. As they cool and dry the brads are added and the curves are faired with hand pressure.
The whole board is then propped up in front of the wood stove to bake for 2 or 3 days.
The bindings are an almost perfect fit when they come off the board. Any small flat spots are trued up on the hot pipe and the cutaway is glued in first. 
Each successive piece overlaps the previous one. A shaped caul faced with sandpaper is used to true up minor discrepancies that show up when the actual binding is offered up to the rebate. 
Working around the body each piece is laminated in place. Stategicly located clamps allow for continuous clamping pressure all around the curved edge. 
The glue will scrape very easily off the polished edge of the body, so I don't worry if it drips all over. With this set up I have plenty of time and can saturate both the binding and the rebate with glue.
By shaving the first strips back at a very shallow angle a perfect scarf joint is formed. Once pared back and rasped flush the seam is very difficult to locate. This binding is on for good.
