Neck preperation
The fret sprout is pretty low, but most of it is from fret1 to fret 4 on the bottom side. There are some sharp edges on most of the frets, but not so sharp they will tear your hand up.
Step 1 – face the frets across the length of the neck so there are no sprouted fret ends
Step 2 – level any of the extra high frets
Step 3 – individually knock off the edges of each fret on both top and bottom of the neck
Step 4 – lightly roll the fretboard edge for a very smooth feel
Step 5 – polish the fret tops and ends
Step 6 – use the template to shape the headstock
Step 7 – Sand to prep for boiled linseed oil
Facing of the fret ends was done with a tool I bought that helps maintain a constant angle as you run it up and down the length of the fretboard. I see a handful of these on Amazon and chose this one because the ad for it was a real picture, not a computer rendering and it had two different file tooth structures.
One handy advantage of this tool is that I could also put some finer grit tools into the block that are from my knife sharpening kit. These give me the chance to polish the edges and remove some of the tooling marks that the file leaves.
The smoothing of the fret ends went well, the tool being a good purchase. Easy to use and no real risk of doing anything wrong… right?
Of course, I did find a way. I filed everything flush and cleaned up the ends in maybe 1 hour’s work. I left the neck to sit in the garage for two days and checked the ends again. Yep, a little more fret sprout. Not unexpected and not bad. I just needed to touch it up a tiny bit before continuing.
I installed the lighter grit bar from my knife tool and did a couple test passes. Odd, there was a lot of grinding I didn’t expect. I saw that I had gouged a nice trough into the one side of the frets! I had forgotten to remove the original file and it was in the vertical position and sitting on the frets! I was not terribly happy. I knew I would need to work this mistake down until the mistake was nearly gone or it would cause hanging or even string breaks when bending. Another three hours or so later, I had the frets pretty well cleaned up and the ends touched back to feeling smooth. You can see the remains of the marks in the image about where string 2 would be running.
The cleanup was with a fret beveling file I bought a couple years ago. The sides are angled to help put a crown on the frets as you take material off to level them or clean up a stupid mistake. I had to do this on every fret, so while I was at it, I also tried to level as much as I thought necessary.
The leveling file leaves pretty heavy scratches, so it needs to be polished with increasing fineness until there is a good polish on the frets.
The ends can still have a slight catch to them when you run your hand over them. I wanted to clean this very well and also spent time rounding the ends. This is much easier on this neck compared to the necks that have a binding I don’t want to put file marks in. These marks come right out and won’t show once I oil this.
One trick to doing this was to use a file that I removed the teeth from on one edge. This let me get into the fret without taking off wood. It just took a few moments on the belt sander to do this. The file was one of a super-cheap set I got for this purpose. I think the whole set was around $5.
Headstock
Next was to shape the headstock. I decided to just go with the traditional Fender shape that the kit instructions offered a template for. They said it was a 1:1 template, but it did not line up at all! It was about 8% too small in general, and had too much length at the neck. I measured, calculated the percentage to alter it by, and then reprinted a scanned image of it with the right size. This looked good, but the cut on the bottom was never going to sit properly. I decided to just do my own. I used the spool of solder on my benchtop to trace the round part and used the template to trace in the bottom flat portion.
I had snapped my thin scrolling blade a while back, so I needed to cut the shape out in somewhat straight parts then round it off with the belt sander and manually. I was having some trouble getting into the tight bend, and found that my Dremel had a good sanding bit just the right diameter. That was used to finish off the neck shape.
Last step here was to sand and then tape off the fretboard wood so it didn’t see any of the linseed oil. I don’t want to have a hard finish on the fretboard. I will put the usual lemon oil there.
More to follow…
…I’d like to build a guitar someday…an amplifier is really over my head and I’m afraid I’ll burn the house down 
…
and I didn’t know Jason had built anything Sorry Jason I will find it and check it out I am still tired from the long weekend 
That really makes me feel good has made my morning.
just dont let you wife catch you. You just have to take your time. Expensive tools are fun but not always needed.
cold-ish and dry. The Boiled linseed application is not drying very fast. I may want to wait for a couple weeks on the body until is warms up again.
