Bowed neck wood and fretboard thickness?

[moikey]

I'm about to join my neck up. Its a three piece, but one of the pieces bows slightly in the center. Am I ok to glue it up, and take it down via planing or am I best to source new wood? I ordered the stuff online, and the guy agreed to cut it into the laminates that I could glue, but the sawing process must have bowed it (or the wood was already bowed).

Also, how thick should a fretboard be? My rosewood blank is sitting at 10mm, and I found some sort of answer to be 6mm, but even then, that seems thicker than my other guitars. Whats an average thickness for a fretboard?

 

[mwcarl]

Just glue it up and then plane it out. Assuming that you've had the wood long enough to acclimate to your environment. As for the fretboard, remember that the starting thickness will at least be the thickness at the center after radiusing. I would aim for about 7mm or so and you'll be fine, it all depends on how much fretboard you want at the edges of the neck and what that means for overall neck thickness after carving and radiusing.

 

[moikey]

Just glue it up and then plane it out. Assuming that you've had the wood long enough to acclimate to your environment. As for the fretboard, remember that the starting thickness will at least be the thickness at the center after radiusing. I would aim for about 7mm or so and you'll be fine, it all depends on how much fretboard you want at the edges of the neck and what that means for overall neck thickness after carving and radiusing.

I've had it sitting for about 2 weeks in the same room. Is this enough time do you think?

 

[mwcarl]

Do you recall if it was bowed at all when you got it? I usually wait about a month, but if it's still moving then I'd keep waiting. If you're getting impatient you're probably fine, I'm on the cautious side when it comes to these things.

 

[Manton Customs]

Bowed on the face (where fretboard will be), or bowed on the surfaces to be laminated?

Standard fretboard thickness is 1/4" or around 6 mm, you can of course go a bit thinner or a bit thicker but if you go too thick you won't be able to have a particularly slim neck as you need to allow enough thickness in the blank for the truss rod rout plus at least 3 mm.

 

[moikey]

Do you recall if it was bowed at all when you got it? I usually wait about a month, but if it's still moving then I'd keep waiting. If you're getting impatient you're probably fine, I'm on the cautious side when it comes to these things.

It was definitely bowed when I got it. I've glued up the three pieces, and the middle piece is bowed down a little. I'm positive I can take it down with planing pretty easily though.

 

[moikey]

Bowed on the face (where fretboard will be), or bowed on the surfaces to be laminated?

Standard fretboard thickness is 1/4" or around 6 mm, you can of course go a bit thinner or a bit thicker but if you go too thick you won't be able to have a particularly slim neck as you need to allow enough thickness in the blank for the truss rod rout plus at least 3 mm.

It was bowed slightly on the surfaces to be laminated. 6mm sounds good to me. I'll need to reduce the back of the piece though as I have some cool laser cut engravings on the front.