Time to route the neck pocket. I laid out the neck in its place and measured down to where the bridge will be. I need the bridge to be centred at 25 1/2" but when I positioned the bridge according to my original template it was too far back on the body. Never mind, I will set the neck in a 3" long neck pocket and then position the bridge accordingly.
I now know why the neck was so cheap... There is a taper in the end of the neck meaning that If I just routed a standard Telecaster neck pocket I would have had some unsightly gaps and a poor fit.
So I traced around the neck and centred the template on the body and secured it in position using double sided tape.
The template worked out fine but I did have a few issues, firstly my router bit was too long so I had to use the collar attachment on the router which made the pocket slightly smaller than required so I finished it off with a sharp chisel.
Looking good but the neck pocket is a touch too deep, but some modifications to the pick guard will take care of that. I just hope the action and playability of the instrument isn't affected too much.
As you can see on the picture above, the bridge will have to be positioned about 1/2" closer to the neck than was suggested in the original template.
The pick guard has been rounded to fit round the neck, had a deeper pocket cut to accommodate the bridge, and finally I will need to enlarge the semi-circular control cut out.
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