Shaping the neck.

I put the oak face on the head stock before doing the cut out work, as I wanted to be certain of exactly where the forward-most surface of the head would be as I shape the neck.
The shaping is the part I've been dreading most, and I still have more work to do, so the nail-biting isn't over yet. I actually got a fair bit done on the basic shaping today. I have the taper toward the head end cut, which I did with the use of a simple jig I made in about two minutes. It's just a piece of wood that I attached the neck onto, face down (through a couple tiny holes in spots that would either be lost to trimming or easily filled and hidden). The neck was fixed at the correct angle along the length of the board so that when it was put through the table saw it cut the taper (second picture). The fence has been moved in the photo, but all I did was set it up at the correct width on either side, one at a time, and carefully pushed it until it reached the desired stopping point. The excess was trimmed away carefully and gradually with the saw blade set very low, nibbling into the curved sides toward the head stock. I stopped the long cuts short of the head because the cut needs to curve outward there.
The curve at the heel was rough cut on the table saw as well. This will also need to be refined with other cutting tools, but it's better than having to start going it with all that wood down there.
The thickness of the head has been trimmed down on the table saw as well (no pics of that here, but I have some I can post later).
The final picture shows the profile of the rough neck and the oak head stock face before I glued it on.
Next post I will talk about the angle of the neck, and the particulars of the neck block I ended up making (out of oak).