Neck straightening before levelling and crowning the frets?

[BasistaFunky]

Hello there everyone, I wanna ask you all one very serious and important question because I really need help - It's about straightening the neck before levelling and crowning the frets. So if I don't have a notched straightedge is it possible, will it work and can I do it this way - using 4 little cylinder pieces like putting one on the 1st, two on the 8th and the 10th in the middle of the fingerboard, and one on the 20,22 or 24th fret, and then putting a normal perfectly flat straightedge over them and tightening the truss rod little by little until it touches the middle two cylinders so that way this to show me, and tell me that the neck is perfectly straight and flat? see the image down below:

 

[SamIAm]

Neat approach, but I wonder what would happen if the neck was not flat between 10 an 20?

There is a fellow on youtube, who describes a way of making a notched straightedge that might be a better approach.

 

Sam x

 

 

[Geek99]

17 minutes ago, BasistaFunky said:

Hello there everyone, I wanna ask you all one very serious and important question because I really need help - It's about straightening the neck before levelling and crowning the frets. So if I don't have a notched straightedge is it possible, will it work and can I do it this way - using 4 little cylinder pieces like putting one on the 1st, two on the 8th and the 10th in the middle of the fingerboard, and one on the 20,22 or 24th fret, and then putting a normal perfectly flat straightedge over them and tightening the truss rod little by little until it touches the middle two cylinders so that way this to show me, and tell me that the neck is perfectly straight and flat? see the image down below:

 

Why not just use a string ? Capo on fret 1

Edited April 13 by Geek99

[Norris]

The frets would have been originally levelled with no tension on the truss rod. If you want to level them again, remove the strings, slacken off the truss rod and then maybe wait a day or two for the neck to settle.

 

You can then check if it's level via two methods: firstly with a long steel rule looking for gaps or high frets, and then various sizes of straight edges to "rock" over three adjacent frets

[badger]

1 hour ago, Norris said:

The frets would have been originally levelled with no tension on the truss rod. If you want to level them again, remove the strings, slacken off the truss rod and then maybe wait a day or two for the neck to settle.

this may have been the case when the neck was made, but if you fully slacken off the truss rod any time afterwards, then it may have picked up a bow one way or the other.  the idea of the notched straightedges is that you get the fingerboard straight by adjusting the truss rod & only then level the frets.  if you try to level the frets without the wood straight then you'll end up grinding down the frets either in the middle or at the two ends unnecessarily & probably introduce  other  issues.