laminated neck build advice

[rubis]

Hi everyone
I am about to start on my first bass build and would like some advice on laminating the necks.
I plan to build a Stingray style bass, 34" scale but with a more exotic look about it (a Blingray!). I will make two necks, one fretted and one fretless, to be interchangeable and secured with inserts.
I have two matching macassar ebony fingerboards and I want to make the necks from flamed maple with walnut stringers, in a 5 piece laminate fashion.
I appreciate that laminating will increase the rigidity of the neck, particularly when using figured wood, but how exactly is it done? What I mean is, when I'm starting off with a figured maple neck blank do I cut it into 3 pieces and then flip the centre piece 180 degrees (or end for end if you like) and do I also need to rotate the centre piece by 90 degrees to further vary the grain direction? (in which case I would need to make the centre piece square dimensionally).
I hope I've explained my question well !
thanks
Harry

[henry norton]

Some makers and players believe it helps keep a neck straighter and some don't think it's worth it, (hundreds of thousands of slab sawn one piece Fender necks can't be totally wrong). If you're going to do it, just try to keep the wood grain symmetrical. That is, the laminates either side of the centre piece should mirror one another down the centre line. I always cut my centre laminates so they're quarter sawn, (so the wood grain runs fairly straight from the fingerboard side to the back where the palm of your hand sits) but that's mainly because I think it looks nicer. If you buy a decent bit of wood dried and stored especially for guitar making, you should do fine no matter where the grain is going.

[XylemBassGuitar]

In my experience, laminated necks don't impart any additional strength or rigidity and they are less predictable than single-piece necks. I [i]do[/i] occasionally put thin stringers down the sides of a neck, but that's along with a single, wide core piece. You also have to make sure that your glue joints in the neck are [i]very[/i] good, you don't want any voids in the joints, especially if you are doing a multiple laminate.

I would also [i]highly[/i] recommend that you use quarter sawn wood for all of your laminates (and really any neck no matter what). Sure, Fender can make some flat sawn necks work, but just because something works a little doesn't mean that's the way you should do it. Quarter sawn wood will be a little stiffer and more stable, especially over time.

Having said all that, there are definitely other very accomplished luthiers that will disagree with me, and the above are just my opinions based on my experience.

So, I would orient your laminates so that the grain is quarter sawn in each piece. That is, if you look at the butt-ends of the neck blank pieces with the fretboard face oriented towards the ceiling, the end-grain should be almost perfectly vertical. Do a Google search for "quarter sawn wood" if you need better examples.

Good luck on your build Harry!

[HJCcustoms]

Simply put a laminated neck increases in strength for every ply added. It's not imagined. You can do a slab sawn neck, they work fine with the right piece, and a good fb. i can supply the US Forrestry service study on wood lamination if you desire, but here is a more simple study which is easy to read.
[url="http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2010/Projects/J0207.pdf"]http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2010/Projects/J0207.pdf[/url]

The grain advice given is good, the better your grain is aligned, and the more closely it resembles quartersawn, the better it can be.

Things to remember. gluing surfaces must be flat and square for good lamination, woods must be properly dried, too much clamp pressure can squeeze out most of the glue resulting in dry joins thus rendering the laminate weak. grain alignment is mandatory for predictable results.

Good Luck with your project, and have fun with it.