InspirationPlanningStock Preparation1st Attempt At The Neck2nd Attempt At The NeckHeadstock VeneerFinishing The NeckBuilding The FretboardStarting The BodyShaping The BodyInstalling BindingAssemblyInstalling FretsFinishingInstalling HardwareFinal PicturesIn ActionThings Learned
Now that my blank stock was ready, I took one of the neck blanks (with the 3 pieces of maple) and began work on the neck. The first thing to do is cut the scarf joint, which will allow the headstock to be angled back (in this case 10 degrees). There are two ways to do this, both which have their pros and cons. I've illustrated the two methods in the picture below. The debate on the two methods and their characteristics and which is better to use is beyond the scope of what I want to get into here, and actually has proponents on each end of the fence. Let's just say that after measuring my neck stock I discovered that I didn't have quite enough length to do the second of the methods, so the decision was an easy one for me.
To begin, I had to do some drawing and measuring on the side of the neck blank to determine where the scarf joint should be cut. This took some head scratching, but after a while I think I had it worked out. Then I remembered that I didn't account for the peghead veneer and this would affect the final measurements, so I had to erase it and do it again. Then I did it wrong, so I had to erase it and do it a third time. Finally, I was fairly satisfied with how it was looking. As we'll see below, I still didn't have it right.
Why Do Gibson Headstocks Break? — Haze Guitars
To cut the scarf joint, which is at 10 degrees, I set my sliding miter table to 40 degrees, clamped a square piece of stock to the fence, then clamped my neck blank to the square stock. I had to fiddle with things to make sure they were aligned correctly. You can see the setup in the following picture. Note that the angle of the picture makes it look like I'm going to run my clamp right through the saw blade, but rest assured, there was at least 1/2 clearance.
If someone doesn't have a tablesaw with a sliding miter table, I'm not sure how they could accurately cut this joint without a mess of planing and shaping later. I had to do a fair amount as it is, even with a pretty smooth cut.
The headstock will be 1/2 thick, including a 1/8 laminated piece of maple. This means that the scarfed piece of the headstock should be 3/8 thick. I cut this at the table saw.
Quick Lesson On Determining The Scarf Cut Placement On Scarfed Necks.
Once the piece was cut, I taped it back onto the neck and began to sand the scarf joint to make both faces exact. I did this by clamping a piece of sandpaper to the workbench, and slowly running the face of the scarf joint across the paper, only going in one direction and making sure that the face stayed flat. After approximately 490 strokes (I counted 'cause I had nothing else to do) and two sheets of sandpaper, the joint was acceptable. The photo below was taken after 100 strokes, so the joint isn't yet acceptable.
Now I ran into my next problem. When I layed out the original scarf joint, I didn't account for the saw kerf in my calculations. The net result of this error is that my headstock piece is approximately 3/4 shorter than it needs to be. You wouldn't think that an 1/8 error would cause a 3/4 discrepency, but it does on a 10 degree cut! Clearly I was going to have to find a way to make the headstock piece longer. In addition, (and I knew about this one before hand) the headstock piece was slightly too narrow to fit my designed profile. So I was also going to have to glue on some ears to the headstock to make it the right size.
I started with the process of extending the headstock piece. I took a scrap of the neck from the scarf cut, and cut it down to 3/8 wide on the table saw. Admittedly, this was a scary cut, as the scrap piece was only about 5/8 wide to begin with, and I had to run it through on edge (2 1/2 tall). I used a couple of push blocks to make sure my hands kept far away from the blade. With the piece cut, I mitered the top of the headstock piece and the bottom of the scrap piece at a 45 degree angle. Gluing it this way would give a slightly stronger joint than just butt-jointing them together. While I had the fence set, I also cut some scrap maple down to be the headstock ears. The top side of these parts would be covered by the headstock veneer, so the joints would only be visible on the back. Here are all the parts of the headstock, prior to gluing them up. Note that the scrap piece I used to extend the length (on the left side) had a tapered end. This was residue from the scarf joint cut, and it would be cut off later.
Cutting A Scarf Joint Using A Radial Arm Saw
To make the veneer that would cover the face of the headstock, I actually pulled out some chunks to flamed maple that I had in my scrap bucket (off-cuts from my chess pieces.) I edge glued them together to make a wierd, patterned veneer that isn't typical, but is kind of cool and different. By the way, you'll notice that I do a lot of clamping on my Black & Decker Workmate. These are extremely handy for clamping up odd-shaped things (like four 1/8 pieces of veneer!) As an added bonus, it's very portable so I can glue the pieces up in another room and leave my workbench free for other activities.
I gave the headstock veneer a good sanding, cut off about 7 inches of it and glued it to the headstock assembly.
In the planning stages, I had drawn out a headstock profile I liked and worked out the size. I took a copy of this profile and glued it to a piece of 1/4 hardboard to use as a template. I cut the template out on the scroll saw and drilled holes large enough to allow me to slip a center-punch through to mark the proper tuning peg locations on the headstock.
Blue Ridge Luthiers
Next, I used this template to trace the pattern onto the headstock piece I had glued up. I made sure to keep the center lines of the template and the workpiece aligned. I also marked the hole centers for the tuning pegs while I had the template in place.
I used the scroll saw again to cut out the headstock. I will wait to drill the holes for the tuning pegs once the pegs arrive (mail-order) so I can ensure I drill the proper sized hole.
It was time to cut the neck profile (height). I began by marking my truss-rod depth at the nut (7/16) and adding 3/16 to that amount for a total nut depth of 5/8. I then marked my depth at the 12th fret area at 11/16 and used these two marks to draw a line the length of the neck blank. I arrived at these measurements by using a dial caliper and measuring the neck on my Parker, which has the best feeling neck of the guitars I own. I then had to subtract 1/4 from these measurements to account for the fretboard height. On the body side of the neck, I marked off a line where the neck tenon would start, then drew in a curve from the tenon to the depth line. The actual profile of the curve wasn't that important, as I will be carving away a large portion of it when I join the neck to the body. Sorry the lines are so hard to see in the photo below.
The Scarf Joint
With the neck marked, it was simply a matter of bandsawing down the line and cleaning up the cut with a little sanding.
At this point, I attached the headstock to the neck. With that long, low angle scarf joint, this was a tricky glue up as every time I tightened the clamps the headstock wanted to slide down the neck. I had to go very slow, and as I discovered after the glue had dried, I did get a little creep (about 1/64) but it was small enough to deal with.
Frankly, I wasn't real pleased with how the glue-up turned out. Thankfully, with some filler and some sanding, the gaps should disappear and the evidence should be covered with the fingerboard.
Question About Scarf Joints
The following photo shows how little of a gap this actually was, but the guitar neck needs to be dead-on flat prior to attaching the fingerboard, so I'm going to have to address this before continuing.
To fill in this gap, I took some (what I thought was) maple sawdust out of the shop-vac, mixed it up with some glue,
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