The past couple of days have been spent finishing the neck.  Very tedious days making lots of dust.

First, glued in the mother-of-pearl honu and, once set, polished it up. I’ll be using a spoon shader on my woodturner to blend the inlay into the Koa headstock later on nearer the finishing process.

Next, I filed down the fret ends flush to the fingerboard and angled them to about 40 degrees to improve both appearance and playability (a 90 deg edge would certainly cut your fingers!).  Once that looked good, I made a quick glueing caul to go over the fretted fretboard to glue onto the neck.  after an hour or so, glued the headstock veneer onto the headstock and let it all set up overnight.

Time to shape the headstock.  Needed to flattened the back of the headstock (should have done that earlier) to transfer on the headstock design.  Rough shaped on the bandsaw, tuned on the spindle sander, and fine-tuned via hand-sanding.   Then a couple of hours of shaping the neck making sure the neck to fretboard joint flows smoothly, the area above the nut is comfortable to play the first few frets, and the neck itself is tapered gently with a nice rounded profile.  Last item for the day is to glue on the heel cap.

Toying with the idea of adding a very thin veneer of Koa along the headstock edge.  Might add a nice design element.  Need to sleep on it.