Dovetail Neck Joint

This week, the neck has gone on to John’s guitar and I thought that you might be interested in the process. Much has been written about the various merits of different neck joints; all I’m going to say is that the dovetail joint works for me!

The first step is to route the female part of the dovetail into the body of the guitar. A well thought-out jig and a dovetail router bit gives you this.....

Now, my rule is that this part doesn’t get touched, all the fitting and fettling is done on the neck.

The male part of the dovetail is carefully marked out and the waste sawn off.

Then comes the fitting; this is achieved by chiselling and filing.

Unfortunately, you are virtually working blind and the only way to find out where wood needs to be removed is by using feeler gauges. I know that one method is to cut the dovetail undersize and then use shims to pack the gaps out and adjust the angle of the neck- no comment!

A well fitted tapered dovetail is a thing of beauty- when the neck goes into the body it feels loose until the last 1mm or so when all of a sudden the taper bites and bingo the neck is griped by the body. A smear of glue, light pressure and the job’s a good en! What I’ve neglected to mention is that the neck has to be aligned perfectly in two planes and there should not be a gap between the neck and the body!

With the neck in place, I continue the slots for the carbon-fibre into the neck block. The carbon-fibre is glued in with epoxy and a fillet of wood goes over the top, so that there is a wood surface for the fingerboard to be glued to. The fillet must be undersize to allow the excess epoxy to squeeze out.

Then the adjustable truss-rod goes in- I wrap it in PTFE tape to ensure that any glue that may get onto it (whilst gluing the fingerboard on) doesn’t effect its operation.

All that detail is then of course hidden forever under the fingerboard! I wonder how much time is spent on constructional details that are never seen??

Neck Construction

I've just put the next instalment of the parlour guitar videos on YouTube. This one talks you through the preparation of the neck blank. To be honest, I get a bit fed up with certain guitar magazines- you read reviews of instruments and they criticise necks that haven’t been constructed from a single piece of wood. Quite frankly this displays the lack of guitar construction knowledge of the reviewer!

I buy my neck blanks cut to approximately 1000 x 80 x 25mm; use a stacked heel and a spliced head and in my opinion this is the most sensible and superior way. Why?

Firstly, you get much better quality wood if you buy smaller selected pieces; my supplier knows me and gives me perfectly quartered, straight grain blanks.

Secondly, it’s far less wasteful and with good quality wood becoming harder to get we must use it thoughtfully.

Thirdly, it gives me the option of inserting extra laminations in the neck itself which enhances the neck both structurally and aesthetically.

And last, and certainly not least, you have a spliced head/neck joint, which is far superior as you do not end up with short grain across the angle of the head. I’ve touched on these topics before on the blog, if you’re interested;

Head stock repair

and

Head Joint

Anyway here’s the video with me explaining my thoughts on neck design.......

Jacques Stotzem and Phil Hare

On Friday, we saw two excellent guitar players at a gig in March town hall; Phil Hare and Jacques Stotzem. Jacques plays heavy rock songs on an acoustic guitar- quite something!! Here are links to them on YouTube. If ever they are playing near you, make the effort to see them!

St.Wendreda

Whilst on the subject of the town of March- there’s a wonderful church there- St.Wendreda. The church has the most spectacular carved wooden roof made in the 1520’s with 120 wooden angels and 2,700 fleur-de-lis. So if, like me, you wonder how medieval craftsmen achieved what they did, this is a place to see. You have to get the key, to get into the church, from the local pub- and of course, it would be rude not have a swift pint at the same time! Cheers!