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i looked at this for a long time today at Menards...tried bending it while sighting down it, anchoring it to the floor with the arch of my foot....pretty sure its stiffer than an equal(outside)volume of wood....i'm thinking about making a neck using this as a center strip....just wondering, would any glues really adhere wood to aluminum over the long run? it is 3/4", which would be a bit thick with addition of a fretboard....still i want to try. i'm thinking maple, as outer strips. no truss rod.

Too large. 3/8 would be fine depending on wall thickness.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Interesting. Epoxy, maybe?

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

my fender necks are over 0.8" thick, total....i wasn't planning on hiding the bar, rather, including it as a wide "skunk stripe" down the back, with a thin fretboard...

Epoxy is the only thing to consider but you will only be bonding to the oxide layer. Oxide will pull from the substrate aluminum at around 1000 psi. There are several treatments you can do to increase the bond strength to roughly three times that of untreated aluminum but I doubt you'll want to go through the trouble and I'm not sure it's really necessary.

The best treatment you can do at home is an Alodine solution. If you do a halfway decent job with it you'll at least double the bond strength. But the main reason to use it is to extend to bonding window. Eventually, even if you use the Alodine, the oxide layer is going to reform if you leave the part unbonded. The Alodine gives you many days to get the bonding done.

If you do or don't want to use the Alodine...just make sure there's a nasty tooth...like 150 grit...in the long direction. At least clean it well with acetone or mek before bonding.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Unless you're planning a very wide neck with a flat back, using 3/4" square tube as a center stripe on the back of the neck is gonna severely limit the neck profile. Even if you use the thick-walled tubing (1/8" wall thickness), there might not be enough meat on the corners to accomodate the typical radius.

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

Aluminum moves a lot when the temperature changes. You might not be pleased with the stability of that neck.

yeah the neck would have to be a weird profile near the nut, for sure......but its possible that the bar doesn't have to extend all the way either...maybe. i might give it a shot, its only 10 bucks and some time
i like doing goofy stuff

0.75" seems way too big. Remember it is not just the total depth of the FB, square tube and wood left under it to consider. That square will be 3/4 of an inch wide too meaning that you can't even profile the neck until you get slightly wider than that 3/4. In another thread, you said a neck can't be too thin, this is not the way to get there. . .

Edit: But to answer your queston, I use P/U glue when gluing in metal reinforcement to wood. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

So what's your purpose of using the aluminum?
Aesthetics?
Structure with economics (e.g., increase stiffness without increasing weight, without expense of truss rod or CF inserts)?

Another option is putting the tube in top of the neck, terminating the nut end of the tube at an angle so as to have enough wood at the nut end to easily shape the neck to profile of your choice. If you want the aesthetics of the stripe, you could then finish the neck and do an inlay with a narrower solid strip.

I think your major hurdles are gonna be profiling and finishing. It's best to do the two materials separately.
Any sanding on the wood means the possibility of scratching the aluminum, and scratched aluminum looks like you-know-what. So then you try to polish the aluminum, and the swarf gets embedded into (stains) your maple.
If you were to do an inlay, you could profile the wood first, avoiding the problems.

Funny thing about all this is that less than two months ago I made my daughter a kitchen knife with metal bolsters and maple scales and learned very quickly about the finishing obstacles. I'm pretty sure the guys on the knife forums are laughing.

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

Yea that. To be even more specific - Aluminum moves a lot more than wood does when the temperature changes - like roughly 3x more.

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basically i am curious as to how light it would be, how stiff it would be, and mostly, how it would sound. i know it wouldn't make an ideal neck, or lead to the "next big thing"; Kramer among others tried it decades ago; it would just be one of those "because i can" things to mess around with.
the next size smaller tube i looked at was too flexible and too small to prove or demonstrate anything at all. there were strrl ones and they were monsterously heavy so i didn't even look at how rigid they were.
i did wonder about the expansion/contraction thing with regards to the glue line. probably not too good. then i started wondering about dowels...

Probably not gonna be any weight savings, but the possibility exists to have more rigidity for the same weight.

Can't say how it's gonna sound, but since it's tubing I'm sure it's gonna sound "hollow".

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

Have you played an Ovation lately ?

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

no why? i always hated those things

Aluminum necks.

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

hm i had no idea. i always associated ovation with the mid '80s, but i read they go back a decade before that. also i read that the frets were cast along with the fretboard mold, then capped with a harder steel
lots of unusual aluminum experimental/brief production guitars here:
http://www.jedistar.com/metal_guitars.htm

Ovation builds with nice quarter sawn aluminum billets, very rare.

My mistake, it's flat sawn .

It goes well with their old growth Brazillian plastic back and side sets.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

thats some nice tight grain! wonder where it was grown

that sucks that it is flatsawn. Maybe you can laminate a few pieces and get quarter sawn. If you live on the wild side you can use ebony as skunk stripe.

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

Jamaica!

Alex

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