Last night I started carving the neck! I intend to go with a rather sleek profile, but maybe more of a D shape than C. You can see my main tools I use for this job (before the sandpaper kicks in). I mainly use rasps and files (round, half round and flat), a spoke shave (but still not satisfied with this one, so I use the blade alone for fine tuning the shape later on).

So, first, I start with the volute, I need to remove that ugly step created by the routing I did, without touching the routed part, because (at the center) that’s already at the desired thickness (+ 0.2 mm for sanding):

The lump of tape is to protect the back of the headstock and indicating the shape.

When that’s out of the way, as you can see here, I can carry on with the complete neck:

Well, I would like to have some sort of a stand to be able to clamp the neck to, but for now I just clamp the end of the neck on the table with a few cloths inbetween to protect the fingerboard, and start carving:

Here you can see I’m working my way gradually through the wood to meet the neck (remove anything that is not a bass neck) with the rasp:

After the rasp I switch to a file, slower process but less change of cutting too deep. This is from the treble side:

And this is what’s going on on the bass side. The volute will be deeper and more pronounced, but I will save that for later. I need to have a better idea of the neck shape before I know how to shape the volute:

And some pictures from the other side, after I put it away on the shelf:

I must say it already feels superb! I know it’s not finished, but you can feel where it’s going and the dimensions are working well I guess. I hope the carving job comes out great in the end. Can’t wait for the next run.