Radius block-do I need one?

[the hand of john curley]

Hi all

First step taken into the world of fretless conversion! Bought an old encore, stripped it all down, taken the neck off, the frets out and stuck in and trimmed veneers....now to the sanding! Do I need to use a radius block? The radius of the neck...as far as I can tell....appears to be 14.5"??? But it looks almost flat....if I carefully (or little but even pressure ) will I be able to get away with it?
Thanks
Matt

[Jabba_the_gut]

Hi Matt,

In my opinion, I reckon if you trim the veneer back to almost flush with a Stanley blade carefully then use a firm sanding block with some very fine paper sanding along the length of the neck you should be okay. I use radius blocks for new builds when starting with a flat board but think you should be okay being careful with a normal block for this. I have done this once before and it was fine.

Be interested to see what others think

Cheers

[the hand of john curley]

Thanks for that
I've taken the veneers to pretty much flat so there should be very little sanding needed, just didn't want to mess it up at this point, so really appreciate your help.
Any recommendations on fretboard finish? Was thinking epoxy but will prob just go for an oiled finish....
Matt

[rubis]

It might help when you're sanding to make chalk or pencil marks on the fingerboard, then if they rub off evenly, you can tell that you're sanding evenly
Good luck
Harry

[Jabba_the_gut]

I should say when I did this before it was on a cheap bass! If it had been some thing other than that I would have used a radius block.....

[Myke]

What I did was get a block of wood put the sandpaper on the neck and rubbed it down until it was the same radius and used that. Takes a while though.

I also printed off a radius checker thing and put that on card and tried to make a piece of wood into that radius with different layers of tape. Not as successful.

You don't really need one as people have said