Did I hit my head falling off the turnip truck?

[stubhead]

OK, so you buy a 24" piece of this:
http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=14795&step=4&showunits=inches&id=312&top_cat=1

A 1.75" diameter steel pipe, 0.125" walls. And you slice it right down the middle the long way. So you have (2) a half-round. 0.875" thick, 24" long thing. And you take advantage of LMII's shop services - you can buy a couple of 0.25" slabs of pao ferro fingerboard wood, and LMII will radius them - $9 a piece, and cut fret slots, also $9 each. $30 a pop, roughly.

So now, you have an absolutely bomb-proof pair of guitar necks. All you need to do is attach & trim the fretboard, drill for the tuners, figure out and carve some sort of inset stabilizing block/heel chuck-type thing to screw them to bodies with.

http://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/shop-services/fingerboard-radiusing
http://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/shop-services/fingerboard-slotting

Slicing the pipe is the only hard part. If you wanted to get cute, you could even figure a tiny angle to it, so that each "neck" would be slightly narrower and slightly thinner at the nut end. And wider & thicker at the heel, natch. The pair of them would still be a good deal cheaper than a single Warmoth neck, though the entire "World-of-Fretting" tedium awaits. And if any smartypants snickers about "neck dive" you can JUST BEAT THEM TO DEATH WITH IT and never a dent or ding!

Must've been some gourmet turnips, huh.

 

[bagman67]

Here's your answer for cutting your turnips:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_jet_cutter


You wind up with a dang-near finished edge where your cut is.  I might bead-blast the outside of the tube to give the surface a more pleasing feel.


As long as we're hanging out at the rutabaga stand:


Some wise guy was marketing necks with hot-swappable fingerboards using a thin sheet of ferrous metal on the back of the fingerboard, and a magnetic surface on the neck, or maybe it was vice-versa.  I reckon you could do something similar here if you really wanted to go to town on your cruciferous vegetables.  Fret some fingerboards for traditional samisen or sitar scales, or microtone scales, or maybe make like a mountain dulcimer - the possibilities are without number.


Time for some Di-Gel.

 

[dmraco]

Sounds realistic.  Attachment would be the biggest issue.
You would also have to find a sway to add a slight amount of relief on the pipe/neck.  I do not think a perfectly flat neck is a good thing.

 

[swarfrat]

1. Ugh!
2. It's Stub...I think I must be missing the sarcasm. What exactly are you mocking?
3. If its not ugh again.

If i have a wood project, it takes 2x longer than i think it will. Metal projects take 10x.
Small shop bandsaws won't do this, your best bet is likely a slitting saw on a horizontal mill.

4. Why?

 

[Ddbltrbl]

1. Ugh!
2. It's Stub...I think I must be missing the sarcasm. What exactly are you mocking?
3. If its not ugh again.

If i have a wood project, it takes 2x longer than i think it will. Metal projects take 10x.
Small shop bandsaws won't do this, your best bet is likely a slitting saw on a horizontal mill.

4. Why?

I can answer #4 - Because we can, and because I ain't seen nobody else do it yet!  :toothy12:

 

[Ddbltrbl]

You could probably weld an eccentric reducer (like below) to it and hot shape it to use as the heel for mounting!  :toothy12:

That swappable fret board is an interesting idea. you could make one standard and one fan-fret.  :dontknow:  :laughing7:

 

[dmraco]

check this out. 

http://massresonator.com/2013/02/topeka-artist-richie-woltkamps-amazing-metal-mando-guitar/

imagine playing a full set with one of these.

 

[Surf n Music]

What needs to be done is to mill a brass neck with frets and nut all one solid piece CNC style. It should sustain for days...no??

 

[sixstringsamurai]

What needs to be done is to mill a brass neck with frets and nut all one solid piece CNC style. It should sustain for days...no??

My back just spasmed at the thought... :laughing7:

 

[SustainerPlayer]

I think you got the genre "heavy metal" wrong.  :doh:

 

[dmraco]

I have seen solid billet strat bodies.  Add a brass neck and it could push 40 lbs

 

[Ddbltrbl]

I think you got the genre "heavy metal" wrong.  :doh:

:laughing7: LOL

 

[swarfrat]

Just my rambling musings... What's the purpose? No seriously, not saying it's pointless, just trying to clarify goals.  The major issues as others have pointed out are ungodly weight and oh yeah, have you priced that brass neck? A 24" long 1.75 dia brass rod in round or hex is around $150-170 for just the raw materials.  And don't forget to throw in http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=20420&step=4&showunits=inches&id=1419&top_cat=79, cause you're gonna need em to heft that neck around.

Back to the pipe (and just what exactly have you been smoking?)  It might be worth thinking about folding up some sheet stock into a U  or C. Actually yeah, rolling some 16ga, and folding the ends in to give you some glue surface for the fingerboard might be a LOT easier than trying to slit a pipe in half without wasting half of it. If you went with a trapezoidal profile, you could likely do it on a $200 leaf brake, and you probably have someone with one in their garage within a few dozen miles.

Something else to consider - with a hollow neck, you have not only the resonance of the material to worry about, but the chamber as well. I don't want to bother doing the math, but just my gut based on putzing around the shop and the farm lead me to think on a guitar sized neck, that resonance is going to be a strong nasty upper midrange peak you need to do something with.  It's not a difficult problem, but you need to make sure that your fix doesn't kill the tone you were seeking.  High expansion foam is light and dries fairly rigid. It might keep it from ringing without turning the neck into a vibrational black hole.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

That swappable fret board is an interesting idea. you could make one standard and one fan-fret.  :dontknow:  :laughing7:

Fanned fret guitars have fanned nuts and bridges too.

 

[swarfrat]

By convention.. and with a few good reasons. BUT - it is possible to make a fanned fret fingerboard with a straight bridge, but it greatly reduces the difference in scale length between short and long.

But honestly, if you're building a fanned fret neck, you're probably not afraid of commitment, just build the danged thing correctly instead of trying to build it so you might could make something else out of it it doesn't pan out.