Acoustic Guitar Construction

What are the pros and cons of a stacked heel?

Generally when making a neck with a stacked heel, you will also be dealing with the scarf joint head stock -- that can be a PITA, but very doable if you have the tools and patience to make a good glue joint. The stacked heel itself is easy and strong and attractive if made from the same piece of vertical grain stock as the neck arm -- I've seen some necks made with mis-matched stock and to me that is not a good appearance. Biggest advantage is reduced cost -- a clear 4x6 two neck billet can easily cost $75!

The main pro for a stacked heel is that it can be made from a piece of 1" x 3" with very little wastage. The down side side is that you can almost always see the laminations at the heel - although if done correctly it will be nearly invisible.
The scarfed headstock joint can be covered with veneers to make the joint totally invisible and this ends up far superior - strength wise - to a one piece neck.

A none stacked heel (one piece neck) needs to made from a 3" x 3" or a 3" x 4", there is a lot of wastage and you most likely need a bandsaw to cut out the profile.


Bob

A stacked heel, or stacked neck blank is used almost exclusively when dealing with Quarter-Sawn material. As Ken pointed out this is normally combined with a scarf joint in the Head Stock area. The advantage is that you can build up a neck blank with 1 - 1.5" quarter sawn stock. This is a very efficient use of wood. If you can find a large quarter sawn blank that is approximately 2.25" thick, 6" tall, & 24" long can yield two necks. This will greatly improve utilization of the blank.

The issues already mentioned such as the quality of the scarf joint, matching of grain, etc. have to be taken into account.

You can also take a look at my posting for basic Neck building. My approach is to use rift or plain sawn material to make a three, five, or seven ply lamination. I prefere this method because it allows you to properly orient the grain which greatly stablizes the neck. When done the grain orientation is actually fairly quartered. Finding this type of wood is fairly straight forward. This also allows you to use unique boards, sometimes with figuring. I have build many maple necks using figured wood. I use both soft and hard maple for these necks.

With today's adhesives this may be an over-kill --but I have always made it a practice to add a full length dowel through the heel for reinforcement.