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Howdy -

I've been trying to floss my neck joint. (Thanks Hesh for the tutorial!) I've got one side beautiful and perfect. The other side is high in the middle. My problem is when I try to floss the side that is not flush, it chatters a lot. Does that tell someone what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

Mike,

Try going in the other direction. Also, do some relief cuts on the shoulder so you are only sanding a skoshe of the end grain.

Do what Robbie says. I've noticed that I get chatter when I press the joint together with too much force.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I too get chatter when I push the joint together to much. The other thing I do is to wiggle the sandpaper back and forth as I pull it out from under the joint. This seems to work well for me. All this is done with a light touch, also when pulling the paper out, ensure you pull down over the edge of the body otherwise you can sand away the heal cap and leave a gap there.

Getting the neck joint right and with an ultra tight fit between the neck and body can be very difficult. It takes practice and patience. Keep at it, you'll get it.

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Thanks guys! I do have the shoulders relieved and it chatters in both directions. I'll work on lifting a little pressure off and see what that does. It's frustrating because my router jig got everything pretty dead on. Everything lines up perfectly. The one side took 3 pulls of the floss. The bass side just keeps getting worse.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

One thing I found that can help is to pull/floss the shoulders from the side instead of pulling down. As the others have noted, do some slight relief work on the inner portion of the shoulders, from this point forward it's not too time-consuming.

Greg

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Gwaltney Guitars

Just be careful if you pull the paper out from the side, to not tear out the grain from the side of the cheek...it's not a problem with a very fine grit, but if you're using say, 150 it could tear out...and, as has already been stated, pull down away from the cheek, never up...

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I will add that you should save the backing paper that you peel from 3M pickguard adhesive and products like it. It is thin, tough, and very slippery on the side that releases from the adhesive film. I stick this, slippery side out obviously, to stikit gold PSA abrasive and it helps the paper slip nicely against the sides of the guitar and preventing chattering.

Cheers

Kim

I've used 150 grit without issue, though I guess it could be problematic....most of the time I use 220 grit because it works plenty fast.

Greg

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Gwaltney Guitars

Yep, as I said, it's not always an issue...just a possibility which is a pain when it happens...I just about have it down from the initial cut so that I can start with 180 at the most...usually even finer...seems like the biggest contributor to tear-out is the angle at which the paper is drawn out...if you use a long enough strip you can pull down along the side's upper bout and avoid the issue all together...if you have to floss with a grit coarser than 180 you should look at tightening up how you make the initial cut for neck angle, I suppose...

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Thanks for all the ideas. I got it done today. The key for me was asking my friend, Greg, to help hold it. The extra hands kept everything stable. 5-10 pulls with some 240 and it was good to go.

Kim - that's a great idea with the slippery stuff. I'll try it next time. I knew there was a reason I save every scrap of everything.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom