Official Luthiers Forum!

   The mortice and tenon is an easier joint to fit. The dovetail geometry can give the amature a hard time. They are both good joints and with todays adhisives one is as good as the other in engineering terms.
     The doevtail was a joint from the old days when a joint had to be both mechanical and chemical ( glue ). The dovetail allowed more surface area for the glue to adhere to . The old glues weren't anything like we have today.
    I myself prefer the dovetail only because the joint takes some mastery and skill.
    Once both joints are frozen by the glue they are identical in strength. In fact if the bolt is left in the M&T , the M&T may be stronger. There will be some that will argue mass and other points but from an engineer point , they are the same.
John Hall

I think either method is fine. The mortise and tenon is easier to set the neck and in the long run, I think, easier to reset the neck someday in the distant (hopefully) future. Try the method you are most comfortable with.

The trick in a lot of guitar building when you are new at it is to try to figure out ahead of time which "method" you want to use for a particular aspect before you attempt it. Choose carefully, some methods may be beyond your present tooling or skill level. In luthiery there are many ways to skin a cat. I bet with all the builders on this forum not one of us builds in exactly the same way, thats what makes them unique, and I think there are some darn fine instruments being built out there.

JW, one dovetail will just be a start to understanding it. My first took me eleven hours, and I was less than sure of the result. It's still holding.

Then I did the next, took only three hours, the next was about the same. But on neck four and five, I did each in only one and a half hours, was confident of the joint and it's reversible due to the use of hot hide glue, fingerboard gets PVA glue.

I too see all the migration toward M and T and away from the french dovetail, which is actually a double compound mitre joint. The reason it's so tough, is it has to be nearly perfect to work. And then there is the almost inevitable neck reset in the future.

I'm trying to encourage you.... one way or another. I'm still dovetail for a while longer.

In my humble opinion the thing driving manufactures toward M&T joints is that the manufactures finally admitted to them-selfs that a neck reset was inevitable at some point in the life of the instrument. For years some manufactures claimed that if the neck went out after 15years the owner did not take proper care. But now most have faced the truth and use M&T for the convenience in reseting necks. A wise move IMO.

I'm not convinced either are needed, The mortice and tenon joint is not an interference fit and merely seems to aid as a locator while bolting the neck on to the body. For the last few guitars I've made I have not used the M&T but flush bolted the neck to the body, even easier. If you want to look at the process Kathy Matsushita shows it on her excellent web site.

Kathy's site

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Copy and paste this link into your address box http://www.cumpiano.com/Home/Articles/Special%20interest/hea dblock.html
This is the method I use and I believe it is by far the best method out there. If you go with the dovetail your going to have a fit with it on your first guitar, and occasionally throughout the rest of you life.

Jim,
I switched to M&T from dovetail for two reasons. the first was that I wanted to be able to do resets with less hassle. Second I still wanted an indexing joint M&T with bolt on assembly fit the bill for me. They are both strong joints. So structural is not an issue. Yes Dovetail is the classic joint and you do learn key lessons of woodworking from making a correctly fitting dovetail. But I feel that a well fitted M&T joint is more assembly efficient. and time is money. This is not knocking any other joint assembly this is just what has fit my assembly need the best.

My first two (although number 2 isn't finished yet, and need final neck angle tweaking before it's spot on) were butt-jointed bolt on necks, using threaded inserts I found at a local hardware store. I've since stocked up on a boatload of inserts, as well as barrel nuts (the Cumpiano bolt on neck method, see his website) from Lee Valley, since it was cheaper than anything I could find locally, by a good bit. I'm set for about 40-50 guitars, I think. At least.

Butt-jointed bolt ons are pretty darn simple to make; the only minor 'complicated' part on mine was inserting a maple fillet to help 'hold' the insert, since it was going into endgrain. Many people use a dowel, but I've yet to find any maple or other hardwood dowelling at any hardware store over here. We don't 'do' hardwood at DIY places. Except for some merbau, here or there. And I have lots of maple scraps. Getting everything to line up, centering, etc. is fairly trivial stuff. Hold it in place, sand a bit, check, sand s'more, check, sand. I temporarily stuck some sandpaper to the heel area for rough shaping (I've got a curved headblock surface, not flat. Bit annoying, but I like the look), and then basically held the neck in place, sandpaper in between, and sanded by pulling the paper out. I think Mario's got an illustration of this on his website..

I'm 'switching' to a tennon'd approach with the barrel nuts on my next, because I'm planning on trying out an adjustable Doolin-inspired neck joint. It looks nice on paper, let's hope it looks nice in situ as well ;-)

I spent some time awhile back discussing the merits of both joints with Julius Borges, a staunch traditionalist. He made a very good point about the dovetail. You can set the neck quickly without glue and check a lot of stuff, like the setup under string tension etc., whereas to do that with the bolt-on m&t joint, you have to fuss with the bolts to do that. The dovetail is a lot quicker. It takes Julius only around 10 minutes or so to set a dovetail neck properly. The key is the *accurate* machining of the dovetail and mating slot. Get that right, and things go better. The other key is the proper alignment of the soundbox while it is being constructed.
I'm thinking about doing a bolt-on dovetail as an experiment. No glue, just a dovetail, locked in like a Cumpiano joint with bolts and barrels.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don I use a bolt on and I think it's easier to set the neck with one, the bolts don't get in the way at all. In fact I don't even glue the fingerboard tongue down but support with with some CF Rods in the neck (a modification of the Taylor system)....

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Um, setting the neck on a bolt on is *always* sans glue, and literally takes, what, 1 minute to bolt together? Might still be fifty times slower, but it's still just a minute. I don't think that's a really convincing argument. Besides, while he can do it in 10 now, it would take me a very long time to get to that level of skill. And I personally think that's time better spent perfecting things that, in my opinion, have a more significant effect on the sound. Plenty of bolt-on guitars out there to prove that it can make perfectly great sounding isntruments!

The other argument....in the world of Traditional style guitars, you can't put a M&T on one. Most buyers at that level won't buy them without the dovetail. When someone pays a $15,000 price tag on a traditional styled isntrument, they won't stand for a M&T joint. It's got to be a dovetail. Did I forget to mention that? I do the M&T joint ala Bill Cumpiano, but even so, there's something elegant about a dovetail joint. It intrigues me.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I use the threaded inserts. The brass ones sold in the luthier catalogs are useless. I use the steel ones from the hardware store. They have a slightly tapered shaft and the accept a hex wrench for inserting them.

I drill a 1/2 inch hole in the heel to accept a hardwood dowel. I glue this dowel in making sure that the grain is perpendicular to the direction of the insert.

I drill the holes for the inserts on the drill press. I make sure that the holes are at the proper angle in that they are perpendicular to the face of the hee and not parallel with the fretboard. I chuck a straight hex wrench in the drill press, mount the neck to the table and "slowly, by hand, turn the spindle of the drill press while applying pressure in the drill arm. They screw right in.

I have two screw rods that I have put a point on. I screw these into the neck inserts. I then place the neck in its proper position on the guitar and press the neck against teh body of the guitar. This leaves two dimples in the side of the guitar. I use double sided tape to tape a block to the end of the head block. I then drill the holes for the screws. I remove the taped block. I make these holes one drill size larger than the screw inserts. They are supposed to be sloppy so I can move the neck around while setting it.

Finally is bolt the next on with hex head bolts and washers. Recently I discovered flat head screws that have a wide head and a hex key hole in them. These would look nicer and I'll use them from now on.

I'll be honest with you, if a customer told me he would not buy something because he wanted a dovetail I'd happily tell him to go build his own or talk to Bruce or someone who does. In my experience people who are that picky are never going to be happy anyway, and I would rather just avoid the headaches of dealing with them...

It's enough trouble getting musicians to select a pickup system for their guitar

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

   Once you master the dovetail it is a great joint. the dry fitting and checking locations is one advatage. Also if you are planning to sell as was stated before most people like the traditional construction techiques.
   If I have a skill I am weak in I like to challenge myself to improve. M&T is a great joint for the beginner.
    John Hall

Hum... did you here that Bob Taylor..Just kidding

Here is a thought I had and this pretty much the way I did it.

If you are just starting to build and plan to advance in the craft I would recommend that you build several dovetails first. My reasoning is that patience and skill you develop will serve you well later down the road. particularly if you plan or need to do neck repairs on factory or someone's else's work.

If you are building a guitar for yourself and this is likely to be the only guitar you build I would build Mortise and Tendon bolt-on. Because it an easer fit-up for you. MichaelP38407.7176736111

Like DEW, I am trying to come up with a bolt-on dovetail. I also like Taylor's new design. If I could combine the two, I think it would be awsome! Darin Spayd38407.7273263889

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DES - Shepherd, MI

Some classical guitar makers have moved to a MT join instead of a dovetail. Here's an example:






[QUOTE=jwsamuel] All the books I've read talk about the traditional dovetail neck joint. Yet, I see manufacturers offering more and more guitars with mortise and tenon joints.

What are the merits of one joint vs. the other?
[/QUOTE]

.SonicAgamemnon38407.7607638889