Chubbuck Guitars / Kevin Chubbuck, making & repairing guitars in an old building just north of Boston, Massachusetts.
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neck carve
The neck on the Mousa 003 hollowbody is rough carved and ready for me to finish getting the body together. This time of year is always crazy busy so I'm looking forward to getting this one into the booth once the dust settles.
Wood that didn't make the cut on the neck carve. Kind of a bummer to realize that more of the raw lumber ends up on the floor than in the guitar. But like any sculpture, you find what you need concealed inside and cut away what's unnecessary.
A neck-through early 80's Japanese Yamaha PJ (note the reverse P pickup) in for a neck strip and refinished with Tung oil. There is some nice birdseye figure in this neck that didn't really show until I stripped the thick poly and started to apply the oil. During the setup I found many uneven frets so a level, crown and polish was required to get the action super low for this player. With older guitars, often the screws are an odd assortment of non-originals. This was missing a few pickup screws that needed to be replaced with the proper metric ones. The bridge pickup even had a coarse wood screw holding it in place. Thankfully the pickup threads were not damaged (somehow) and cleanly accepted a new screw. The side-mounted output jack plate also fell victim to the random screw swapping so I replaced them all with a matching quartet.
Neck carve & rewire :: 2014 JW Van Tele [9.1 lbs]
A custom tele in for a replacement 6-way "Freeway Switch" and rewire, add master volume and neck recarve. Mmmm ... P90's ...
Neck recarve :: 2014 JW Van Tele
I've carved another neck for this player and he knows what he likes. This neck was much too thick for him (~0.960") so it was carved down to his spec's and refinished with tung oil for a satin feel.
Kalliope neck carve.
I took some time last week to make improvements to my old neck holding jig for carving necks. The 1" thick plywood it was made from had cupped badly so I sandwiched it with two pieces of 3/8" plywood on either side to straighten it out. This also significantly increased it's rigidity, which makes carving much more efficient. The more your carving jig deflects, the less wood you remove with each stroke. I also took a torch to the jig and burned it to give it a bit of character and then sealed it with a coat of shellac.
Kalliope 001's neck is in the jig, the neck for Rogue 005 is on the bench in the background.
![Neck strip, oil & fret level :: 1982 Yamaha BB2000 [9.9 lbs]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dfcee2e4b0c0da377c65c7/1446589434191-LODMYNWVDUWV4GV52OXB/image-asset.jpeg)
![Neck carve & rewire :: 2014 JW Van Tele [9.1 lbs]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dfcee2e4b0c0da377c65c7/1436202957780-9IOK8VZTVHW6SJ05IUGK/image-asset.jpeg)
