Acoustic Guitar Construction

This is neat stuff. Thanks for sharing with us.

Nice work with the neck scarf joint. I have been afraid to try a scarf joint and have been cutting my necks out. Yours looked to go together nicely. Looks like a great project.

Well the maple neck just isn't going to make it. I started the layout and shaping, but I just can't stand seeing the glue lines, so I won't burn it, but I'm not going to use it on this guitar. I'll cut out a solid one piece honduras mahogany neck. I guess I really like the solid necks.....no laminations showing, no graining running in the wrong direction.
Here are some pics of the maple neck as it is.
I also thicknessed the sides to about .085" and profiled them. They and the curly maple bindings are ready to be bent, so time to get the light bulb heated fox style bender out and put it to use again. Exciting! Oh by the way, since incandecent light bulbs are being outlawed in California, and the over 100 watt ones are already off the shelves....before they disappeared, I bought $100 worth of 150 and 200 watt bulbs so I can continue to use my bender for years to come. When my bulbs are gone, I may have to go for the silicone blanket, but for now, the light bulbs get plenty hot.

Kevin

Very educational and helpful to those of us working on necks! Thanks again.

I picked up on a procedure from the Taylor factory. Their necks are scarf/heel block assemblies -- the trick is to have a blank large enough so that matching heel blocks can be cut off the billet first before the thinner are material is re-sawn -- ie 36X3x3 cut off three 3" blocks then resaw three 1" thick blanks for scarf jointing. Of course the billet must have nice vertical grain to begin. I am not fond of the stacked heel look.

I saw that Ken. They are trying to be more frugal with the wood. I was trying to figure out if I could do the same thing with a 30" x 3" x 4" billet. Two 4" heel blocks, 4 x 22" shafts. Scarf three of them, glue heel blocks to two, and do a stacked heel on the 3rd. Looks like the measurements might JUST make it with not much room for error. That would yield 3 necks from the billet, instead of two solid blanks. However, I really like the looks of a solid neck. Seams really bug me.

Kevin

Seams really bug me.

Here this should help you get over it -- a laminated scarf joint neck is more stable and "much" stronger

Another factoid --- Martin is now using flipped book matched billets instead of solid wood, stronger and helps in conservation. I have not been told how far this goes up/down the product line -- I know they will still be using some solid billets.

Of course the darker woods conceal seams better.