Mark prepares the neck for bolting to the Frankenguitar body
Okay, the neck: I started with a neck partially shaped I "inherited" from a friend who passed away. I think it was from a kit, because it has the cute bump under the headstock, the shaft pretty much shaved to shape, a groove for a truss rod and a tenon at the unshaped heel.
I glued on the headstock veneer, trimmed it down and laid out and bored the holes for the machine heads,
I decided after some reading and thinking, to saw off the tenon and pursue a bolt-on neck ala the older Taylor concept, using threaded inserts in the heel. I also decided to bore a hole in the heel at a right angle to the long axis and glue in a 3/4" dowel of hardwood (red gum eucalyptus, because I had it). The reason for this is to catch the threads of the inserts in the long grain of the hardwood dowel rather than in just the endgrain of the honduran mahogany neck. Eventually I'll cap the heel with wood to match the sides and back. I got this idea from Liutaio Mottola's great website http://liutaiomottola.com/construction/Bolton.htm
The challenge was to fit the heel to the body because the body is not flat at their meeting place.
I spray-adhesived 80 grit sandpaper to the body where it meets the neck and clamped it in the zyliss vise. 1500 strokes later, the neck at the heel mated perfectly with the body. Alignment in at least two planes was a constant worry sense my half-cocked method involved little or no control over these variables, but I just tried to make my strokes short and regular. I then predrilled and set the inserts into the heel and drilled holes in the heelblock of the body.
When I got it bolted up I was pleasantly surprised with how solid and secure the joint felt and looked, and with how well the neck lined up with the centerline of the body. However, I think i need to do a neck reset already, because a straight edge along the fingerboard rides up to a point too low over where the bridge and saddle will be. According to Cumpiano, the "back-set" of the neck is insufficient.
Next post (pending) will be fingerboard #2
I glued on the headstock veneer, trimmed it down and laid out and bored the holes for the machine heads,
I decided after some reading and thinking, to saw off the tenon and pursue a bolt-on neck ala the older Taylor concept, using threaded inserts in the heel. I also decided to bore a hole in the heel at a right angle to the long axis and glue in a 3/4" dowel of hardwood (red gum eucalyptus, because I had it). The reason for this is to catch the threads of the inserts in the long grain of the hardwood dowel rather than in just the endgrain of the honduran mahogany neck. Eventually I'll cap the heel with wood to match the sides and back. I got this idea from Liutaio Mottola's great website http://liutaiomottola.com/construction/Bolton.htm
The challenge was to fit the heel to the body because the body is not flat at their meeting place.
I spray-adhesived 80 grit sandpaper to the body where it meets the neck and clamped it in the zyliss vise. 1500 strokes later, the neck at the heel mated perfectly with the body. Alignment in at least two planes was a constant worry sense my half-cocked method involved little or no control over these variables, but I just tried to make my strokes short and regular. I then predrilled and set the inserts into the heel and drilled holes in the heelblock of the body.
When I got it bolted up I was pleasantly surprised with how solid and secure the joint felt and looked, and with how well the neck lined up with the centerline of the body. However, I think i need to do a neck reset already, because a straight edge along the fingerboard rides up to a point too low over where the bridge and saddle will be. According to Cumpiano, the "back-set" of the neck is insufficient.
Next post (pending) will be fingerboard #2
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