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Fitting the neck

Routing the neck pocket

The correct neck alignment is extremely important: the outer strings have to run parallel to the fingerboard edges from the nut to the bridge and the neck center line should line up correctly with the body center line. If the neck is not mounted dead straight, parts of an outer string might end up off the fingerboard. The pocket that will accept the neck is best cut with a flush-trimming cutter bit with shank-mounted ball bearing. For this purpose you need an accurate 1:1 template of the neck shape. Such templates are commercially available for standard Fender-style necks. I personally prefer using a jig made up of two long, 19mm (3/4")-thick and about 50mm (2")-wide boards plus another short piece of wood to using just one template for defining the shape of the neck pocket. The straight edges required on the boards are easy to plane.

Place the neck in exactly the position it will eventually be in and fasten it on the body provisionally using a clamp and a clamping caul (1). Then put the two straight, narrow boards to the left and right of the neck and clamp them to the neck at the 1st and 14th fret, as shown in picture 2 (the second clamp is missing in this picture). A rule taped down across the body in the bridge area - a zero-mark in the middle of the rule would come in very handy - helps to center the neck. To determine the position of the bridge transfer the scale length onto the body with a long rule, starting from the front edge (body side) of the nut. If you don't have such a long rule, you can either measure up half the scale length from the 12th fret or the difference of the scale length minus the distance from the nut to the last fret from the last fret. If the guitar is to have a pickguard, fasten it temporarily for aligning the neck. The neck can now be aligned very accurately by lining it up on center with the body (2). When the correct neck alignment has been found fix the position of the boards by fastening each of them with two clamps at the lower body end. At the upper end of the neck the distance between the two boards is fixed by placing a short scrap board under the neck and across it (3). Fasten the board with two clamps. The two clamps placed on the boards right at the beginning can now be removed in order to allow removing the neck.

Now insert a third piece of wood at the lower end of the neck. It doesn't matter if this piece doesn't fit in tight because the ball bearing of the cutter bit is large enough to not follow into any gaps in the corners. If the end of the neck is rounded off, the front end of the piece of wood has to be cut and filed accordingly to ensure it fits in. Since the piece of wood and the two boards

are all 19mm (3/4") thick, it would also fit under a fingerboard that is longer than the neck. Fix the piece of wood with thin double-stick tape (4). Thick tape such as that used for fastening mirrors would be far too strong for this purpose and would make it very difficult to remove the template afterwards. Apart from that the marks left by such tape would also be very difficult to get rid of.

Remove the neck now and you have an exact 1:1 template for your ball-bearing cutter bit (5). How thick the template has to be made depends on the length of your cutter bit - the ball bearing must obviously touch the edge of the template. Flush-trimming cutter bits with shank-mounted ball bearing are commonly 1" long. There are also 3/4"- and 1/2"-long bits, but these are less common and more difficult to get hold of. Wealden Tools offer a wide range of cutters (see addresses of material suppliers at the back of this book). I use a 1"-long cutter bit, which is why the template has to be quite thick.

The depth of the neck pocket depends on the bridge used, as I have already mentioned in the section on “Design”. When the bridge is set to its lowest position the strings should touch the fingerboard. The pocket depth is therefore “thickness of neck plus fingerboard (25mm or 1") minus lowest possible saddle height”. Pre-drill the pocket and remove as much as possible with a chisel (6). Then cut it out cleanly in several passes (7). Set the stop to the point of the bit less 1mm (0.04"). This will make it possible to safely remove the holes left by the point of the bit. The tighter the neck fits into the body and the flatter the contact surfaces are, the better the sound transmission will be. If, by mistake, the pocket has been made too deep, correct it by gluing in a piece of hardwood.

Set the drilling depth to the point of the bit

If you use a brad point bit or a Forstner bit, always take its point into account. Lower the drill bit onto the wood until its point almost touches the surface. Now set the drilling depth just a little shallower, to be on the safe side. The depressions left by the point of the bit are finally routed off.

Take the thickness of the template into account!

A mistake commonly made when making the neck pocket is to not take the thickness of the template into account. Put the template on the body and then the router on top of both. Lower the bit until it touches the body surface and then lock it. The cutting depth can now be set by putting a shim of appropriate thickness under the depth stop.

fastening it with two clamps (4). To save your cutter bits it is advisable to remove most of the wood with a Forstner drill bit before using a router. Set the depth to the point of the drill bit so that any holes left by it can later be removed with the router. For routing set the depth stop to about 2mm (3/32") above the depth needed and cut out the pocket. Then set the exact depth

required and cut out the pocket in a final pass (5). Because of the template being quite thin a rather short ball bearing cutter bit has to be used for this (1/2" long for instance).

Cutter bits leave round corners which will have to be squared with a chisel if the neck end has sharp edges (6). If the end of the neck is rounded, it may be necessary to mount a flush-trimming cutter bit of smaller diameter and to tidy up the corners with it.

Gluing in the neck

By making a neck tenon all glue lines are hidden well. Cut the neck tenon before gluing on the fingerboard. For gluing in the neck apply glue on both the neck tenon and the bottom side of the fingerboard and then press the neck into the pocket in the body. Use a clamp for pressing in the neck.

Fingerboard

wider than the neck

By making the fingerboard wider than the neck you can hide things that may have gone wrong with making the neck pocket. If the neck is to be angled and the body surface is flat, two small wedges will have to be glued in (one on either side).

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8

The heel has to be square to the mounting surface

10

Making the angle on the neck tenon

A neck angle can also be achieved by transferring the angle onto the neck tenon (7). This is a bit more tricky, though. If the neck is to have a heel, it must be square to the mounting surface on the neck. Fasten the neck upright and cut its mounting surface at the appropriate angle (8). Make sure to fasten the neck so that you can cut vertically. Leave the front edge for the time being as it is, to enable placing the routing template there (9). The neck shown below (10) is intended for bolting on, but it could equally well be glued in. Since the neck tenon is cut at an angle, the front of the neck also has to be angled to ensure the neck can be pressed fully into the slot. I use a disc sander for this job and set the table at an angle.