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Carbon Fibre neck rods - tips needed

M

Martin Beer

Dec 4, 2004
904
826
#1
I'm about to build a new bolt-on neck for my home-built five string bass, to replace the OLP MM5 neck which it has currently. I have decent AA plain maple blanks for the neck and fingerboard, a double action truss rod and two 6mm square carbon fibre rods to add some stiffness.
While I have built a neck once before, I have never worked with CF rods, and would like to hear how other people do things.
Which adhesives work with CF - does it have to be epoxy? And should I use the same adhesive to attach the fingerboard to the neck, given that some of the surface it needs to bond to is the face of the CF rods? I would usually use Titebond for this, but I have a feeling it may not bond well with the carbon fibre.
Should I make my slots using a 1/4" (6.35mm) router cutter, allowing for a glue line? Or should I use a 6mm cutter for tight fitting slots which might suffer from glue squeeze-out when the rods are inserted?
 
#2
Epoxy is the best thing to use.

If you have a 6mm bit, I'd use that. If you only have a 1/4" bit, I'd use that. If you use a good epoxy, it will fill the gaps and be very strong.

I have used titebond to attach the fingerboard to all the necks I've done, including those with carbon fiber rods. There shouldn't be any adhesion problems.
 
#3
Cool, thanks for that. I'm planning on borrowing a router from a friend, but picking up my own bits so that I can be sure of having a new, sharp cutter. I'll go with the 6mm.
It'll be interesting to hear what difference the stiffer neck makes on this bass, given that I'm using the same woods and scale length as the existing neck.
 

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