Last Saturday we talked about overcoming fear, because that was the thing keeping more of you stuck than anything else.

But as I kept reading through your replies, I started to see another pattern emerging.

The guitar neck kept coming up.

Neck angles, geometry, the joint, the frets…

On the surface, those look like technical problems, and partly they are. But underneath them I could see something deeper that I recognized right away, because in the beginning I struggled with it on my own guitars too.

The interesting thing is that the fix isn’t really about the neck or the frets. It has more to do with how we think about and approach the whole guitar.

I’m excited to dig into it with you today, because I know firsthand that once you start building this way, a lot of the confusion and stress falls away, and building a neck becomes something you can actually enjoy.

It all rests on one idea: learning to start with a reference surface.

Let me show you what I mean, using a few of the questions you sent in.

“How do I stop chasing mistakes?”

Last week, a question came in about how you keep from chasing mistakes around a neck and fretboard, fixing one thing only to make another worse.

We’ve all been there 🙂

You spot a high fret, so you fix it. But that creates another issue, so you fix that one, and that creates another, and now you’re right back at the first one again. Then you adjust the truss rod, and all of a sudden the frets you just fixed are low and others are high.

It blows up into this crazy mess, and you can’t tell which way is up. It feels like you’re underwater, flipped around, and you don’t know how to get back to the surface.

Sometimes that confusion alone is enough to stop us in our tracks. Randy from Montana, who I mentioned last week, told me he’s “scared to death of getting the neck angle wrong (again…and again).” He has four bodies on his shelf, and none of them has a neck joint cut yet.

And I bet you can think of other places where the same thing happens: finishing, side bending, neck carving, and the list goes on…

There are two answers to this kind of problem: how to stay out of that mess, and how to get out once you’re in it. Both start in the same place.

So why does this happen?

One of the trickiest things about guitar making is how many variables we’re working with at once. Change one, and three others move. Everything is interconnected, or coupled, as I call it.

I learned this the hard way.

More than two decades ago, I was building a steel-string guitar with an asymmetrical upper bout, which meant there was nothing perpendicular to the centerline that I could measure from. Then I layered fanned frets on top of that, so every single fret sat at a different angle. The fingerboard was tapered and elevated, and the top was domed.

Before I knew it, I was trying to build this guitar, and I couldn’t even figure out how to measure it. Curved surfaces intersecting, angles that seemed impossible to pin down, and no way to know whether I was building it right.

I felt completely lost.

That guitar was the catalyst. It forced me to find a system, and that system has served me well ever since.

And to be honest, you don’t need a design that complicated to lose your footing. Even on a traditional guitar it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Some people just freeze. Others push through without seeing the chain reaction a slightly wrong angle sets off, and end up in deep trouble later in the build.

Here’s the good news: the way out is simpler than it sounds.

What we need is a source of truth to build from.

That’s what a reference surface is.

For example, when I’m laying out a neck blank, I pick one side and make sure it’s nice and square to the face where the fingerboard will be glued, and parallel to the centerline of the neck. I draw a little square on it, and I call it my “Square Side.”

That’s my reference surface for that stage of the build.

I leave that side alone until pretty far along in the build. That way, no matter how many angles are splaying out in different directions, I can always go back to it and reset.

Okay, here’s where I am.
Here’s the floor I can stand on.

Eventually the neck has to be tapered, and the Square Side has to go. So before I cut it away, I transfer my centerline to the back of the neck and to the center of the fingerboard.

Every stage of a build has its own reference. So any time one has to go, I plan ahead and carry forward what the next stage will need from it, and I always know exactly where I’m working from.

But there’s an even deeper kind of reference surface, and it’s the one I most want to tell you about.

Make a full-scale side view drawing.

A reference surface doesn’t have to be a surface at all. It can be a line, or a drawing.

When it comes to neck geometry, my most important one is a drawing: the full-scale side view of the guitar. I will never build a new guitar design without making that drawing first.

As you make it, you work out all of the geometry before you ever touch the wood. Then it becomes the thing you keep coming back to as you build.

On the side view, you can draw the neck at the neck angle you think it needs, then project the string paths out to the bridge location, at the action you want, and measure where your saddle height will land.

The purpose of the neck angle is really to help you get the right saddle height. And saddle height matters a lot, because it sets how much torque the strings put on the bridge and how they drive the top.

If the saddle comes out way too tall or way too low on the drawing, you know you have a problem. And it is so much easier to fix it there on paper than after you’ve just cut the neck joint and… now what?

Always work it out on the paper first.

There’s a bonus, too. When you draw the guitar full size, you’re really building it once, in two dimensions. By the time you pick up the wood you’ve already been through it, and you bring more intuition to the bench than you’d expect from one simple drawing.

But what if you’re already in the mess?

That’s trickier, but the same idea will get you out.

Start by establishing your reference. On a fretted neck, that means getting the neck as straight as you can with the truss rod. That line, as straight as you can get it, is now your reference surface.

What you don’t want to do is keep adjusting the truss rod. Make that decision once, get it where it needs to be, and leave it alone until the fretwork is done. Every time you move it, you change all the other variables again, and that’s exactly how the chasing starts.

Then lay a straightedge along the tops of the frets and look for anything that doesn’t line up. Why isn’t my straightedge touching all the frets? Answer that question before you start leveling anything.

This is a troubleshooting frame of mind. You’re not taking the next action just because someone said it’s the next step.

You’re looking for clues to the actual problem, and testing your theories in the simplest way first. Often it’s a fret that isn’t fully seated, or one that simply needs leveling. Sometimes it’s bigger, and the frets have to come out because the fingerboard wasn’t leveled before they went in. Once you’ve found the core issue, the next step is clear.

See how we’re not going around in circles anymore? We’re just going down the line, in order of importance, one thing at a time.

And it isn’t only the neck. It isn’t even only the guitar.

Another person asked why his chisels still weren’t giving him a clean cut, even though they were sharper than before. Interestingly, it starts in the same place.

Flatten the back first. That flat back is your reference surface. Only then are you ready to think about the bevel and the edge.

Necks, frets, chisels, a whole guitar design… it’s the same approach every time, just applied in a different way.

So here’s something you can try this week.

If you haven’t started your neck yet, draw the side view of your guitar full size, and find your saddle height on paper before you cut anything. Be sure to factor in the dome of the top if you’re using one, and project the string paths with the action above the frets included. Then see whether the neck angle you actually need is the same as what you originally thought.

And if you’re in the middle of a mess right now, anywhere in the build, stop. Pick the one surface or line you can trust, and mark it. Then measure everything else from it and go down the line, one thing at a time.

Problem solving first, then action.
Dare to know, dare to create.

To make great guitars, and to become a confident, skilled luthier, you need a lot more than information. You need clarity.

That’s what the Luthier’s EDGE is made for. It isn’t there just to show you what I do. It’s there to help you build your own confidence and your own deep understanding. That becomes the true reference surface of every guitar you build.

Sapere Aude · Creare Aude

Tom

P.S. If you’d like to go deeper on any of this, these are the courses where I teach it:

• The Square Side, and moving your reference as the neck takes shape: How to Make a Fanned Fret Guitar and How to Make an Elevated Fingerboard Guitar
• The full-scale side view drawing, step by step: The Art of Guitar Design
• Straightening the neck, troubleshooting and leveling: Fretwork Mastery Part 1 and Part 2

P.P.S. Next Saturday, we’ll talk about time, space and the small shop.