Let's just make life a little easier...

[Mark A. Kane]

I had this fixture made to secure Taylor necks to my neck jig. It's just a length of 2" cold-rolled steel bent on a press brake to the proper dimensions with the end welded to itself. I had it powdered-coated to pretty it up. I don't typically take the neck out to refret a Taylor. I use the Taylor-branded Fret Buck in the soundhole to absorb the shock of the hammer for most jobs, but if the neck is out for some other reason and it needs frets, this makes things easier. It allows me to work the frets on the extension without the risk of damaging the top.

Here it is attached to the neck jig. It's just bolted to the deck.

Here's another view.

The dust collector is on wheels and I push it right next to the jig and run it on high when doing any sanding on the fingerboard. I learned this lesson the hard way many years ago by inhaling a lot of dust over the course of a much-interrupted afternoon of trying to level a rosewood board without protection of any kind. Boy, was I stupid! I got bronchitis the next day BAD! It lasted about 5-6 weeks! So it's a dust mask as well as the collector for me these days. Learn from my youthful hubris!

Here it is clamped to my main workbench. Sometimes I work it here as the bench is slightly higher than the neck jig and I can see things better.

Another view.

The hole on the left is there to allow tightening of both the neck bolts to the right using a long ball-hex wrench. The same goes for the hole on the bottom.

[Mike Kolb]

Nice work !

[Mark McLean]

That just makes sense. Thanks for sharing the idea.  

[Walter W Wright]

nice!

do you have a setup so you can string the neck up in the jig while bolted to that thing? that would be perfect, you could do a true tension-leveling or even refret while leaving the guitar body in its case.

i suppose there might be some tolerance error between this fixture and the angle of the actual two surfaces of the body pocket, but that's what the taylor shims are for, you can cheat the fretboard tongue a degree or two up or down in relation to the neck plane.

[Mark A. Kane]

I do indeed have a jig with a bridge on it that I can mount in order to simulate string tension, but I never use it on Taylors or much else anymore (the exception being select bass necks). My philosophy has morphed to a simpler, less fussy approach to fretwork (Frank's "Mr. Good-Enough Wrench"). The results are what count, but that's a discussion for another time. 

Funny you should mention the possibility of error in the fit. Because I stressed the importance of the fit beforehand, the machine shop that did the bending ground the mating surfaces to exactly 90 degrees, so the fit of the unfinished fixture to the neck was perfect. However, the subsequent powder coat was thicker in places which introduced a small error that I then lapped out.

[Walter W Wright]

i was thinking more about the errors in a random taylor neck pocket! 

they're supposed to be a perfect 90°, but a block of wood subject to years of string pull and humidity changes? i routinely have to fix taylor neck angles by increasing the heel shim angle by more than the tongue angle so as to eliminate tongue rise.