Shaping the neck

So instead of buying some lumber for the necks, I noticed that on the back of an old mirror, there were two 40" long 1x2's. I pulled em off and cleaned them up, and they seem to be working well so far. I'm not sure what type of wood they are, however.

So the first thing I did was mark off where I wanted the nut to go, where I wanted the body to join at, and where it will end. I shaved off about a 1/4 inch wide section at the end to use for a bridge, and then trimmed it down further to arrive at a total length of 36".

Above you can see where I slotted the neck for the nut to be placed. i bought some wood carving tools, files and rasps at harbor freight on sale for 15 bucks. I think I got something like 20 different files, half of em with handles, and the larger ones came with 2 large plastic handles so I can interchange them.

So after slotting the neck for the nut, I marked off where the neck was going to join the body on the back, and where the headstock would begin, and started to shape the back with my rasps.

I was trying to get it to a nice rounded C shape so that it will play comfortably, unlike the solid slab of wood I've seen used on all of these how-to sites. Basically what I was doing was just cutting with 3 different shaped rasps, then smoothing it out with a rounded wood file, and going over it again until I had a nice comfortable shape to it. Here's a few more pics of the progress.

After I arrived at a shape I was comfortable with, I took an orbital sander, and smoothed it out with a gradual step down method of grit. I started with 80, moved to 100, 150, and then 300. After this I went over it with some 0000 grit steel wool to get it completely smooth. Feels great now for a first attempt at neck shaping.

As you can see, its a little bit bumpy, but bear in mind, this is my first ever attempt, on a guitar i'm building for fun, and I can't really feel anything while running my hand over it. Here's one more picture after the finishing sanding.

After finishing the back of the neck, I radiused the fretboard using my stewart macdonald 9.5" radius block. miraculously, I got it level on my first attempt, and the radius feels pretty smooth. Just as with the back of the neck, I used 60 grit paper with the block, then used 150 and 300 on the orbital sander, smoothing it with the steel wool afterwards. After that, I used my jigsaw to cut the headstock on an angle to give the strings some break angle, and I used my craftsman drill and a 3/8" bit to drill holes for the tuners.