Guitar Neck Pen

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hewunch

hewunch

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Albany, GA
OK this is my first post over here. I frequent TPS mostly, but came over to learn some stuff at the recommendation of VisExp. This is my 1st take on a guitar neck pen. If you play, I would especially appreciate your comments. It was made to resemble a Maple board tele or strat. The kit is a Jr. Retro (my first). The "fret board" wood is Birds eye Maple, the back of the neck is Maple and Walnut (skunk stripe). Aluminum can was used doubled over for the frets. The finish is Plexiglass. Thanks for your opinions ahead of time.

guitarplaced1.jpg


guitarplaced2.jpg
 
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Thanks y'all! It was fun. Bruce, hopefully by the time we get together I will have the material for the next one.
 
Very nice pen, indeed.

But, I have to admit that I might not catch its theme right off the bat if I didn't see the background decoration. I own a Fender strat. I dont know if you play guitar, so forgive anything obvious that I say. The frets on a guitar get more and more narrow as they approach the body of the guitar. Additionally, the dots are not spaced so few frets apart. The first dot is on the 3rd fret from the headstock, then basically every other fret the rest of the way except the double dot, which has an extra fret on either side of it. Of course you know it's all about how realistic you want to get and how much effort you want to put into one pen. I've just started my very first lamination of any kind, so I'm not going to say you should do more. It is very time consuming from what I have experienced thus far.

I guess if you want to get more detailed on the next one, have progressively closer aluminum bands. And more bands overall(smaller scale). Heck, you could do the whole fretboard if you thought you had a customer that would pay what it would be worth in time and effort. Here's a shot of a maple strat fretboard. http://guitarparts.net.au/images/Picture 1198.jpg

If I had to specify one thing that I think would make it distinctly stand out as a guitar neck though, aside from the aluminum and dots (which look great), it would be the progressively narrower frets.

Brandon
 
Thanks for the comments. This is my first probably of many. I just ordered some MOP and Abalone for dots. We will see how that goes.

Brandon, the frets are not exactly all the same spacing on a real neck you are right, but in the first few frets it is hard to see the difference. Good call though.
 
I agree it's hard to tell within the span of just a few frets. Maybe I'm saying you could exaggerate the spacing a tad to get the point across. I'm sure you'll find a technique that works perfectly. Look forward to seeing your future projects. :)
 
As was said, the frets get small as you get closer to the bridge.

It's called the Rule of 18 and is measured by the length of the string from the nut (Head) to the bridge.

simply divide the length of the string by 18... yielding the distance from the nut to the first fret. By subtracting that figure from the original string length they arrived at a new shorter scale measurement which was then divided once again by 18 and resulted in the distance between the first and second frets.

BTW - Great job
 
I won't be able to comment until I use it to slide down the neck. >:-p
Send me one and I'll try it out.

Marc

hewunch said:
OK this is my first post over here. I frequent TPS mostly, but came over to learn some stuff at the recommendation of VisExp. This is my 1st take on a guitar neck pen. If you play, I would especially appreciate your comments. It was made to resemble a Maple board tele or strat. The kit is a Jr. Retro (my first). The "fret board" wood is Birds eye Maple, the back of the neck is Maple and Walnut (skunk stripe). Aluminum can was used doubled over for the frets. The finish is Plexiglass. Thanks for your opinions ahead of time.
Click to expand...
 
OK, well more will be on the way. I have some Abalone and MOP dots being shipped. Ought to be here in a couple of weeks (coming from Twain!)
 
Hi Hans

Glad you could join us here :smile:

Hans and I met on Eagles Woodworking site. We recognized each others user names from a non pen related forum we both used to frequent a number of years ago. Turns out "it's a small cyber-world after all".

Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
 
Tell him to check out the next one. I hope to have it done by the end of the month as I have to wait for my secret ingredient to come in.
 
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