Official Luthiers Forum!

I will try to post some pictures of how to do the modified bridle joint as Martin did it In the next week or so. Although it appears complex in some ways the actual cutting of the joint is elegantly simple. My approach to making the joint has changed over the years and come closer to what Martin did. I will try to show Martin's method and possibly a few minor modifications that make fitting it a little easier when using power tools.
I have noticed that my ability to communicate ideas with words is somewhat lacking in this and other discussions on the forum and for this I apologise. Hopefully with some pictures I will be able to convey what I mean.

It would seem to me that three or five ply laminated neck construction (e.g., Gibson's laminated maple necks and most of the 'Michigan School' custom builders) would be stronger than either scarfed or one-piece construction, and allow grain orientation to be controlled to avoid the problems seen in Gibson and Epiphone one-piece neck shafts (large truss rod excavations and poor quality control re: grain orientation).

The point made on material efficiency is a good one, but in terms of bottom line cost impact to a business, sourcing costs are at least as much a cost driver from what we have seen as per board foot costs. We have no issues sourcing flat-sawn genuine mahogany neck stock in 4/4 to 12/4 locally (within an hour's drive), but can burn up a couple hours finding the odd piece of VG stock locally. From the cost viewpoint, it's much more efficient to source VG stock from Hibdon or other specialty vendor than for us to spend the labor dollars finding it locally, while our costs for flat-sawn stock dictate local sourcing versus the $35 to $50 per BF delivered.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

I'm with Woodie on this one. If I'm going to make a neck with more than one piece it will be laminated. I've done several three-piece necks with the center laminate just a piece of veneer and I think they come out quite nice. Here's one that is walnut with maple veneer. Just another option.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thanks in advance for taking the time to do that. I don't have 1 set way to make up a neck blank. How I do it is determined by what woods I have on hand and want to use for the project and what look I'm going for. I have several necks worth of stock that is too short to use without grafting a peaghead in some way. I also have a ton of peghead worthy stock to match. For some reason I have been intimidated to try the V joint or the bridle joint; mostly because I do better once I have seen something done several times.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I looked around for one piece blanks the other week and was blown away by the way prices have soared. A scarfed joint is literally less than half the cost of a one-piece neck right now, and it's also structurally superior. The problem is the non-uniform look at the joint. I want my work to be well-executed from a structural as well as artistic standpoint. If I use a back strap and run carbon fiber through the joint, it will be strong either way. However, the availability of material at a reasonable price has me seriously considering going to a scarf until one-piece blanks are more reasonable (if they ever will be).


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We do make scarf joint necks -- they are not my favorite, but can be made artistically interesting with creative use of seam hiding veneers on the head-stock. Surely more economical than solid blanks.

The cool thing about laminated necks is the variety of designs that can be achieved, many times a nice combination comes about just using cut offs from other operation. And as pointed out flat sawn material is far more available at considerable savings over VG lumber.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Guys, what's your technique for centering the router bit perfectly on the center lam when doing the truss rod slot?

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Here's our (KMG) proprietary truss rod router -- the base is self centering, the blank is clamped into the holding fixture, the bearings ride on the sides of the rails.

Also pictured is our laminate neck blank clamping station and our Scarf joint clamping station, which is designed to make alignment easy and prevent the HS and heel from moving under clamp pressure.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Terence, I've always used pre-made necks in the past, but I just made my first two from scratch. I used my laminate trimmer in its Bishop-Cochrane base with the edge guide and a 1/16" bit to nail the truss rod and carbon fiber channels.

I routed them before doing anything in terms of roughing out the taper. I penciled in center lines for each rod and adjusted the router until the 1/16" bit split my pencil line in half (cutting depth was a fat 1/16"). I did the truss rod channel first and switched to a 1/4" bit to route the channel once the edge guide was adjusted spot on. I used the same method for the CF rod channels, switching to the appropriate bit for them once the guide was adjusted.

Then I roughed the taper of the neck. My fretboard was pre-tapered. Once it was glued on, I used a flush trim bit to flush the neck up to it.


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Hi JJ,
Basically what I mean is this:

I start with fairly thick stock, usually 8/4 (actual size is 1-3/4"). I cut it into 2-1/4" x 1-3/4" pieces.

I do a scarf joint on these and glue it on (no wings yet)

Then I glue some more wood on the heel. This gives me a scarf jointed neck blank #2

I rip it down the middle and glue my laminating pieces in. I usually use maple in the center and dark wood on both sides. Note that the laminating pieces are not scarf jointed. The hardest thing about the process is lining the pieces up so I use locating pins in the headstock where they will be covered by the wings. So when you are done you end up with the scarfed mahogany pieces on the outside and non scarfed center pieces.

The other thing I do is grain orientation. If I just ripped one blank and glued the laminates in the grain would be as shown in #2. As you can see from the sketch I try to buy wood that has grain orientation as in #1. The scarf jointed neck blank before I do anything looks like #2. That grain just seems wrong to me. To avoid it I make a second blank from the stock but on this one I reverse the ends of the heel blocks and scarf joint.

Once I cut the pieces in half I can make up my necks with one half of each blank so I end up with grain orientation like #3.

Opps, I can't post pictures here so I will post it on the same thread of the forum.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

About a year or two ago, there was an article in American Lutherie detailing 2 methods of doing the bird's beak joint. One was Greven's, but I've forgotten who did the other one.

Steve

Aside from the extra work on a scarf joint, I'd be concerned about the strength of the glue joint. It seems like it has a lot of end grain in the glue joint. I've never done one though so I am probably wrong. Seems like something that someone should do an experiment on to test the strength of the two approaches.

But clearly both have been used on lots of guitars and both work.

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Blog on Making Stuff: http://www.McGlynnOnMaking.com

Most guitars have a head plate that will make the scarf joint much stronger. If you add a back strap as well, it makes for a pretty rigid sandwich.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

What Alex said for sure and I'll go so far as say that a properly glued scarf joint should fail elsewhere first,
even without head plates or back straps. The wood will fail before the glue joint.
Ken

I get the interest in wanting to be efficient in use of wood, but I'm kinda wondering why builders allow their choice of building methods to be driven, at least in part, by feeling like they need to build a stronger neck to accommodate the few people who are careless enough to drop their guitar on its head or smack it against something hard enough to break the neck. I think everyone would agree that a one-piece neck is plenty strong for normal use and doesn't just break spontaneously.

I've owned guitars for almost 50 years and have yet to smack a single headstock against anything, which is because I pay attention to what I'm doing with my guitars as I'm sure most people do with theirs. If someone ever breaks one of the guitars I build by being careless, negligent, or stupid, it's on them. I don't feel a need to build an armored guitar to accommodate nitwits or guitar abusers. I bet that the actual rate of headstock breaks as a percentage of all guitars is exceedingly small, including one-piece necks. We hear about them mostly from repair people, but that's because the are like magnets for broken headstocks. They are repair people after all.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

It's not necessarily the players who are careless, but sometimes the people around them. I've repaired several broken pegheads and it is the neck to head transition area (short grain) of one piece construction that usually breaks.
The modified bridle joint with a glued on heel block I do believe makes the most efficient use of material, even more so than a scarf joint, so that is an added plus. If the joint is well made it can appear to be one piece construction to the casual observer.

I use laminated necks for the simple reason that it is easier for me to find a 5" flatsawn board than a quarter sawn 3" board. Never had a neck break, but I've only built a couple dozen guitars over the last decade or so.

I know the cork sniffers all want a one piece neck. Finding a 4"x4" blank to yield only two necks is just too much waste and too hard to get for my sensibilities.


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Added strength is not the only reason I prefer to build with a scarf jointed headstock and stacked heel. I can get a lot more necks and other useful bits out of a billet if I slice it up into 3/4" pieces first, then stack, than if I bandsaw out two necks, then try to find stuff to build with the leftovers. It just feels more responsible to me, in several ways. If somebody won't sniff my cork because of that, I can live without my cork being sniffed by those folks.

Gosh, that sounded dirty.

I don't remember the last time I sniffed a cork, and I'm pretty sure nobody has sniffed my cork.

The neck on the first guitar I built has a scarf joint and a stacked heel. I've built one-piece necks since then mainly because I don't generally care for the look of stacked heels or scarf-jointed headstocks, although I do agree that it's possible to blend a scarf joint in pretty well to nearly invisibly. I just like building guitars that appeal to me. For me, that aesthetic opinion outweighs the "waste" of making one-piece necks, plus I don't have any reason to think they aren't fully up to the task structurally.

A couple of the uses I've found for the left over wood are to make panels for testing out finish and dying methods and to make mock ups of joints between mahogany and binding and purfling to figure out how to stain the mahogany without staining the binding or purfling. I've also used the offcut material to have laser-etched mahogany sound hole labels made. So I do find some useful things to do with the waste material.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I've built necks using all 4 methods - one piece ,scarf and stacked heel, laminated, and bridle joint and block heel. I think they all are good structurally when well done. In most cases the bridle joint and block heel works for me, but depending on the material in hand , and the instrument I am building I will use any of those constructions.

I also think that the concern over a broken headstock on a one-piece neck is blown out of proportion. There are millions of one-piece necks out there, so what is the actual percentage that ever get broken? Lots more fragile parts on the typical guitar.

As for waste, I cut 2 necks from a 3 x 4 x 26 inch long blank and use all of the offcuts for end blocks and other small parts, such as "wings" on headstocks. Almost nothing is wasted. I can understand the difficulty of sourcing wood for 1-piece necks and the need to use what you can find. And, I admit that the scarf peghead can be effectively concealed by overlays, etc. But the stacked heel is staring you right in the face, and I think it looks cheap on a 3 to 5k custom guitar.

just my $.02

Grant

Whatever, everyone seems to have a reason for why they prefer scarfed necks or 1 piece necks.They are both valid, and reflect the luthiers artistic wishes.