Dovetail joint fit need help with correction

[Beau J]

unfortunatly i do not know the radius of the bracing that came with this kit i am attempting to find this out but it does not seem readily available


to the best of my knowledge this kit was purxhased directly for Martin guitars and the information i can find suggest a 36 foot radius but due to my lack of expertice here i cannot verify that

[ken cierp]

Have you tried to attached the neck? With the neck positioned and the level laying on the neck plane -- how high is the level off the sound board?

Is this a dove tail or mortise and tenon neck joint?

[TonyinNYC]

I can not offer any advice on how to rectify the problem with the dove tail joint, but I do find it interesting that there are so many people having difficulty with it versus the people having difficulty with a KMG kit.
Personally, I will not ever do a dove tail joint. I have learned how to set a neck with a M & T joint with no issues. There has been no evidence that a dovetail joint is any better at transferring energy from the strings to the sound board. In fact, there have been many guitars built with a floating neck joint that sound great, so why complicate the issue?
Best of luck with getting your neck straightened out. I really mean that. building your own guitar is so rewarding and exciting, I hope the troubles with the dovetail have not turned any of you off to building.

[ken cierp]

Beau -- who's instructions did you use to assemble this kit?

[ken cierp]

It seems to me that indeed the neck block is tilted inboard at the top and out-board at the bottom, as opposed to the top of the rim being sloped. While there is an angle formed (be it .5 too much) the orientation is incorrect and not complimentary to the neck heel. Frankly without actually seeing the gutar body and neck I can be of little help. Perhaps others will chime in. I would recommend however that if you have not done so, you should purchase Bill Cory's Martin Style construction guide.

http://www.kitguitarmanuals.com/


Bill's procedure and explaination is very good -- much more comprehensive than a few of the on line videos on the subject.

[Beau J]

here is a picture with the level on the neck

i viewed probably hundreds of vidios etc on guitar building, but i would say did not get the correct information

i do know that a large portion of this is due to the neck block installed improperly, i can think of dozens of things i would do differently

as stated earlier if this is not fixable i may attempt to mount the neck any way as a learning task

the neck does not fit the dovetail mortise very well at all i did a chalk test and only get a decent chalk mark on 1 side of the tenon almost none on the other

he guitar top is flat up until right before the bridge area an then slopes off toward the tail block there is also a slight radius
from side to side

thanks for all the help and advice this will not be my last guitar

[Tim Benware]

Can you measure these 2 angles, notice the neck angle is 88.3 and the body angle is 91.7 i.e 88.3* + 91.7* = 180*. Those were machined in at the start. You can still match those angles up. It may be a combo of adjusting the heel and flattening the top you don't necessarily need to know them to fix it but it's good to have an idea of exactly where you are off.