Three Barnstormer laminated neck blanks.
From left~ walnut and osage orange; cherry and cucumbertree; walnut and cucumbertree.
The one on the right will end up looking like this:
I am very picky about the wood I use for one piece necks. I like it to be very straight-grained and clear to ensure stability, but not all wood is like that.
I like to be able to use wood that is not perfect. This is easy for the bodies of the guitars, as they are larger slabs of wood, and defects in them do not cause the problems that they would in the neck.
Very often, a board that would otherwise make a fine neck will have a small knot, crack or the grain may not be entirely straight.
In this case, what I do is cut it up into strips, keep the ones with no defects, and use the rest for other purposes, usually kindling.
Then, by arranging the good pieces in a manner that balances out the unstraight grain’s tendency to warp with humidity changes, and gluing them together, I end up with a neck blank that is actually stronger and more stable than a single piece of wood. This way, I can also combine different woods which not only looks nice, but allows allows me to use lighter weight woods in conjunction with stronger ones. I make one piece necks as well, as they are aesthetically pleasing in their own right, and are perfectly fine as long as the wood is the way I like it for this purpose.
This is nothing new of course, but is usually only done in necks with angled headstocks. Fender style necks with inline headstocks are almost always one piece, mostly because that is what people have come to expect, it is simpler, and it has always been easy enough to get plenty of suitable wood to make them this way.
I, of course have no problem with doing things differently, and like the way it looks, especially on the Barnstormer necks; it seems to fit well with the vintage aircraft motif that I have worked into this model.
The only complaints I have gotten so far are that some people don’t like the way the stripes look on the face of the headstock, which I can understand.
Again, I happen to like it in this context, but for those who don’t, an overlay can be put on the face. The example I show here is on a one piece neck, but you get the idea:
