Official Luthiers Forum!

Do any of you pros use only one bolt for the neck join. It's always somewhat of a problem for me to get both aligned properly. (visualy impared) I'm thinking of trying to use only one. I have been using the hanger bolts as per Colings in Austin.

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RJS

I don't think one bolt will be sufficient unless you also glue the neck in. I use dovetails, but if I were doing bolt ons I'd use 2. For alignment either use a couple short hanger bolts ground to a point on the end. Line up the neck and use the pointed bolts to mark the neck block. The other way would be to have the neck block pre drilled. Line up the neck and mark the tenon through the holes from inside the box. You'll probably need some kind of guide/jig to drill the holes straight. I'm sure some others who actually use these type of necks will have better suggestions.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

I have seen one and two bolt systems . They all seemed to work fine. If you are looking at the Martin system , they are glued.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

IIRC, Lance made a jig to do this very thing but I didn't see it in the tutorials section. Maybe he will weigh in and re-post that jig.

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Dan

I recently tested a neck joint with a single bolt on the lower half of my neck tenon. I also used two bolts to securely fasten the fingerboard to the soundboard. The guitar has been strung up for months with no movement. I find it works nicely.

Occam's razor strikes again.

If you use the one lower bolt the string tension pulls the top of the neck against the block. On the adjustable neck the top bolt can be left off as it serves mostly to keep the neck from wobbling when all the strings are removed but the FB tongue is floating with the adjustable neck. Mark Swanson has a template jig for drilling the holes and I have one but I'm going to rework and make it from Alu.. Of coarse you will need less holes. Depending on when you drill your holes you would either need to shim the tenon side by the thickness of the top. You can see the top shims in the picture.

From a purely mechanical strength point of view, one bolt is plenty strong. I'd place it about
1/2 to 2/3 of the length of the neck heel away from the soundboard. I've used this in several
guitars with no problem, and several good players think the guitars sound fine.

I also used a mortise & tenon on the body/neck join, to hold the neck in alignment, although
the fingerboard alone would probably do that just fine.

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

Thanks all. I'll try the one.

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RJS