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After we have the fretboard cut out and thickness sanded to size, it is time to slot the board. For small jobs, I use the fret slotting saw, fret slotting template and miter box. There is a formula to figure out the fret spacing for odd scale lengths. Try the
fret caculator I found online. I used this formula for a couple of neck jobs with odd scale lengths. For Building your own practical fret slotting machine, please refer to my eBook soon to be published. As my orders for necks started to increase, my ability to manually slot fretboards became impractical. Take it from me, I wanted to manually slot each neck but the miter saw blade seems like it expands as it heats up from friction and gets harder and harder to saw as the slot gets deeper. The saw actually feels like it is a slip fit when the blade is cold and a press fit and pinched in the slot when hot. Not sure if this is really happening, just what it feels like. I even tried some types of blade lubrication with no luck. There is much detail when it comes to slot depth. In a perfect world, it is nice to have .010″ depth below each fret tang. As the radius changes down the neck, the flat bottom slot cannot match the effect of the taper and radius at the fretboards edge. I will discuss tips and tricks in detail in the eBook. This is beyond the scope of this blog.
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Making the fillet for the truss rod channel. I use a piece of flat stock scrap from the maple fretboard blanks. I saved the first working fillet and use as the template for all other fillets. The use of a .03mm mechanical pencil helps in getting as close to the original as possible. Gently rotate the led of the pencil, topside of led towards the original template. Now I take the maple stock with fillet outline over to the band saw. I cut as close to the pencil mark as possible with out crossing into the fillet. If there is more stock than needed, I head on over to the belt sander and slowly remove stock to the pencil mark. The next step is to put the semicircle at the back end plan view. This is done to match the truss rod trench near the heel of the neck. Lastly, I drum sand the final thickness of the fillet till I have the correct fit into the truss rod trench.

Brazilian and Cocobola by JCSMI

Next we need to cut out the wood blank keeping a 16th of an inch from the pencil mark we made in stage 3 using the plastic template. I use a bandsaw to perform this task. Try and make four or five relief cuts so you do not have to cut a lot of curvature at one time around the headstock and the heel of the neck blank.

Tomahawk Guitars using neck by JCSMI

The first thing we need to do in the actual building process is to select a premium grade of wood for the neck blank. Next we need to bring the board down to the desired thickness using a drum sander or a shop planer. My total stack up for the neck thickness equals 1 inch. Next I trace out the neck profile using a pencil and the plastic neck profile template. Check out my Amazon store from time to time for some suggested products you may be lacking. The store makes for a good checklist of items to help you get the job done.