Here is your dose of mid week old Kay drama:
I had a pretty good neck failure come into the shop this week that is a common discussion around here, so I wanted to show it. None of this was my prior repair work.
There is a common response around here that you can take an old Kay dovetail (or Epiphone, American Std., Englehardt, et cetera), open up the old tulip poplar neck block, add a few large shims to the dovetail and suddenly you have a structurally sound traditional mortise and tenon joint.
Basically, all you have done is created an even weaker joint that was two pieces and now turned it into a minimum of four pieces, often with additional shims, that creates more potential for failure. A stacked jigsaw puzzle is not equivalent to a well fit traditional two piece mortise and tenon joint. Here is a photo of this week's fail:
It appears to have started with a common broken heel. One large and two smaller dovetails were installed with the wood grain at 90 degrees to the neck grain, creating a lot of future wood movement conflicts. Next the block was opened up only in width, wings were added to the dovetail cheeks, and also a front spruce shim was added to the endgrain of the front of the neck, likely from a factory gap, and then another shim where the button connects. That is a lot of parts under 300 lbs of tension with what also appears to be not much glue connecting all of it....
I had a pretty good neck failure come into the shop this week that is a common discussion around here, so I wanted to show it. None of this was my prior repair work.
There is a common response around here that you can take an old Kay dovetail (or Epiphone, American Std., Englehardt, et cetera), open up the old tulip poplar neck block, add a few large shims to the dovetail and suddenly you have a structurally sound traditional mortise and tenon joint.
Basically, all you have done is created an even weaker joint that was two pieces and now turned it into a minimum of four pieces, often with additional shims, that creates more potential for failure. A stacked jigsaw puzzle is not equivalent to a well fit traditional two piece mortise and tenon joint. Here is a photo of this week's fail:
It appears to have started with a common broken heel. One large and two smaller dovetails were installed with the wood grain at 90 degrees to the neck grain, creating a lot of future wood movement conflicts. Next the block was opened up only in width, wings were added to the dovetail cheeks, and also a front spruce shim was added to the endgrain of the front of the neck, likely from a factory gap, and then another shim where the button connects. That is a lot of parts under 300 lbs of tension with what also appears to be not much glue connecting all of it....
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