Today after work (yes Ted, I really do have a job!) I spent some time working on the neck, specifically the heel and neck joint. Although I had the neck pretty much shaped, I still needed to do a little bit of work at the heal to get the shape I wanted. I used my small sanding drum on my cordless drill, files, and sandpaper to shape it to a nice curve that kind of has an hourglass shape. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture looking at the back side of the heel so none of these pictures really show what I am talking about. I will just say that instead of the edge of the heel from the cap to the fingerboard being in a straight line, it is in a curve which gives it that hourglass look. With that and the over curved inside cut, I am very happy with the look of the heel. It is quite different from the majority of neck heels. Next time out, I will get a good picture of it so you can see what I am talking about.
After that, I decided it was time to fit then neck joint. With this being a scratch built neck, it took a bit more time to get it to the correct angles and sitting flat on the body, but I finally got it. I had to file the end of the tenon a bit because it was hitting the back of the mortise but other than that, it really wasn't much harder than the pre-carved necks. I still need to do the edge markers, put the last frets on, and flatten the top where the fingerboard extension goes but other than that, the guitar is ready for finish sanding and then off to the spray booth. Oh, and I also need to get the tuners so I can make sure I have the holes correct before I finish too. I went with the specs of the tuner post dimensions on Stewmac's site so I hope they are correct! I drilled 1/4" holes for the tuners.
I spent some time playing with the kit wizard again. This time I want to build a jumbo out of bearclaw and Camatillo Rosewood. I have looked at a few guitars built with it and it really is a spectacular looking wood, and the price is reasonable which is always a big plus. Once I get this one sanded and pore filled, I will be making an order.
It took a bit of work to get the angle correct but I finally got it so the straight edge just skims over the bridge. If you remember, way back when I cut the neck tenon, I mentioned that I couldn't figure out how to get the 1 1/2 degree angle in the cheek cuts. I really wished that I had figured that out when it came time to fit the neck!
Here is the heel cap joint wetted with naphtha. If you look closely, you can kind of see the shadow line of the hourglass shape I did. I still need to do a bit of fine tuning on the shape of the heel cap. In this picture I can see that it is not perfectly symetric.
One side of the neck joint.
The other side of the neck joint. That black line is not a gap, I think it is a trick the camera is doing with the wetted woods. You can also see the curve a bit here by looking at the curve of the joint. That is not a curve in the side, it is a curve in the neck.
3 comments:
I have built a guitar body and I am using a glue in neck that I removed from another guitar. I know I need to make a templet for the end of the neck that fits into the body. So how do I get the correct angle of the body slot???Thanks for any infomation. Leonard Clemente
Hi Leonard,
Sorry I didn't get back very quickly to you. The angle of the neck block and body should be square to the sides and depending on the radius of the top, there is usually around a 1 1/2 degree angle on the top. The block however should be square to the sides. The neck is where all of the fine tuning and adjustments are made. Since the neck is already build and the body is done you will need adjust the NECK to fit the body, not the other way around. So the neck slot should be square and to the size of the tenon on the neck. Once you dry fit the neck, you start removing wood from the neck from back to front and side to side until the neck is square and the angle is correct to the body. Once you have it correct, you should be able to sit a straight edge on the frets over the soundhole and the straight edge should just skim over the bridge (not the saddle but bridge). When I say skim, I mean it just barely touches or floats over by no more than 1/32". If the straight edge is sitting too high over the bridge you need to remove wood from the fingerboard end of the heel. If the straight edge bumps into the bridge then you need to remove wood from the heel end of the heel. Go slow and remove very tiny amounts of wood then test. A very small amount of wood removed makes a very big difference. Once the angle is correct you can 'floss' the cheeks to get them to sit cleanly on the body.
Remember it is a system. It is hard to get parts from one guitar to fit cleanly on the body of another. It certainly can be done, it will just take more work.
Hope that helps. I have gone into this in a fair amount of detail on the OM as well as lesser detail on the other builds.
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