installing a new headplate in an unfinished neck

[peter havriluk]

I am building up a kit guitar that has a very thin, and damaged-before-I-got-it veneer on the headstock. I purchased a headplate roughly 1/8" thick and two sheets of thin veneer, to be laminated between the neck and the headplate. A local luthier I've been using as an advisor suggests that I be sure and not make the headstock too thick by laminating this new material to it without accounting for the additional thickness. Sounds good to me. So I'm looking for advice on how to proceed. I can run the neck through a planer-joiner to remove however much material is appropriate. I also want to install the headplate so's the nut is captured in a roughly 1/16" deep slot between the headplate and the fingerboard, making the altered neck headstock 1/16" thicker than it started. I thought I could cut down the headstock using a planer/joiner, laminate my new material on to wind up with a headstock 1/16" thicker than what I started with, and then shim the neck with 1/16" of material and run the headstock through the planer/joiner once again, this time in plane with the shaft of the neck/fingerboard which I think will get the headstock 1/16" thicker than it started at the nut position and then trim the lamination at the nut location, and i'd wind up with my thicker headstock, laminated with the new headplate, and the headplate and fingerboard would offer a shallow (1/16") slot to install the nut into, the bottom of the slot being the original nut position.

Seeing as I'm fixing to ruin the neck if I misapprehend anything, I'd appreciate comments as to whether I have a workable idea (luthier says it ought to work, so long as I do it right) and whether there are some 'gotcha' elements I haven't considered.

Thanks very much.

[ken cierp]

The three things that are important -- how thick is the headstock now, how thick is the intended new veneer (.070" +/- is normal) , and actually the thing that the luthier helpers should have know and asked --- what's the maximum thickness the tuning machines that will be used tolerate. In reality that's the only restricting factor. Most tuners have a pretty tall peg/post and sleeve nut. If this neck is one of the imports with the paper thin veneer the head stock is likely thinner than normal.

[peter havriluk]

Thanks, Ken. I'll measure the tuners and see what they'll tolerate for headstock thickness. Luthier did discuss paying attention to headstock thickness, and it was in the context of making sure the strings didn't get excessively close to the headstock surface. At the time of our conversation, the tuners weren't present, the neck and headplates were. You called it right referring to the veneer on the headstock as 'paper thin'. With an upper corner torn out, too.