Well, I actually did the angled headstock for my first build and found it to be quite doable. There are definitely more scary, complex and difficult steps in guitar building than making a scarf joint with some veneer glued over it...
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Planning and design for a first build...
- Thread starter JanVanHove
- Start date
Well, I actually did the angled headstock for my first build and found it to be quite doable. There are definitely more scary, complex and difficult steps in guitar building than making a scarf joint with some veneer glued over it...
I can think of three ways of doing an angled headstock:
1-carving the whole thing (neck and head) from a single piece
2-gluing the headstock to the back of the neck, and using a veneer as reinforcement
3-wedging the headstock piece between the neck and fingerboard, here the fingerboard acts as reinforcement...
Option 1 is deffinitely more work-intensive but should yield a more solid build...
What's your take on options 2 and 3?
1-carving the whole thing (neck and head) from a single piece
2-gluing the headstock to the back of the neck, and using a veneer as reinforcement
3-wedging the headstock piece between the neck and fingerboard, here the fingerboard acts as reinforcement...
Option 1 is deffinitely more work-intensive but should yield a more solid build...
What's your take on options 2 and 3?
Well, actually, option 1 is the least solid. Because then, the grains don't run straight with the headstock, but at a shallow angle. Making it weaker.
Options 2 and 3 are both good solutions, but the veneer won't ever reinforce the joint, being about 2 mm thick. It just covers up the joint... I don't know which one is stronger, but I liked option 2 best and went for it. It's pretty sturdy!!
I can recommend you reading the guitar building book from Martin Koch. It helped me alot!
This has caused me the most frustration. the scarf goes fine, But i didn't get the thickness right, So I end up spending several days with a flush cut saw, a belt sander, and a sanding block. lesson learned. ALWAYS GLUE THE HEADSTOCK AT ITS FINAL THICKNESS! I am saving up for a safe-planer for this too. Can a safe-t planer be used in a hand drill for carving, or does it always have to be a drill press?
I wouldn't go this way.. stick to the drill press.. otherwise, you won't get a 'plane', if you know what I'm saying..
So, If the headstock should be glued in at it's final thickness, I guess then that it is completely thinkable to use a different piece of wood than the one used for the neck itself... For instance, a nicer piece of birdseye or flamed maple stuck to a plain old maple neck... This even makes more sense if the neck is a multi-piece laminate and you don't want a multi-piece head...
Hmm... interesting ideas, here, mateys...
Hmm... interesting ideas, here, mateys...
I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable using birdseye maple anywhere on a neck other than a fingerboard. You're looking for strength and dimensional stability, birdseye isn't so good in these respects. Also not sure that I would agree with attaching the headstock at its finished thickness; my preference is to carve a volute here to keep the strength in the neck at its thinnest point. You might not have enough meat there if you go the route of having it at its finished thickness. Thinning out a headstock takes me about 45 minutes tops, start to finish, with just basic handtools. My own opinion is that the time and effort saved by having the headstock already thicknessed isn't worth the loss of strength in a critical area. Not saying my way is the right way and everything else is wrong, just throwing some ideas around to think about.
Fair enough, Bimmer, I'll deffinitely think about all of that...
Maybe birdseye was a bad example, and maybe the thickness part is not a perfect idea, but one point remains: using a different wood for the head than the neck could make for a nice esthetic touch for one, but having a one-piece head could potentially further add to the stability of a multiple-piece neck by reinforcing the joint between those pieces...
Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way...
Maybe birdseye was a bad example, and maybe the thickness part is not a perfect idea, but one point remains: using a different wood for the head than the neck could make for a nice esthetic touch for one, but having a one-piece head could potentially further add to the stability of a multiple-piece neck by reinforcing the joint between those pieces...
Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way...
For my past builds I did a scarf with the headstock piece at final thickness. The problem here is that if you do a volute then part of the join falls behind the volute (at the back of the headstock). This can look untidy (for my previous builds I put a veneer on the back of the headstock to cover the join). For the next 2 builds I'm planning on keeping the headstock the same thickness as the neck and thinning it down after completing the scarf joint. Maybe I can draw a picture to describe it better...
I'll try and do something this weekend with some scrap wood I have in my garage... I need to get my hands on some wood shavings soon or this whole bass project will feel way too abstract...
went tool shopping yesterday... clamps, a fine saw, a rasp, a plane and a bench vice... (yes, my workshop is starting from scratch!)... Today I'm starting on a prototype head, we'll see how that goes...
Well, a couple of scrap pieces of wood, a saw, glue, the rasp and some patience got things started:
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out after only one day...
(no powertools involved here apart from a circular saw to cut the neck to width...)
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out after only one day...
(no powertools involved here apart from a circular saw to cut the neck to width...)
After a round of cutting material from the back of the head, including the creation of the volute, as well as the putting in place of the fingerboard which is as we speak being held in my bench vice for gluing...
I'm quite happy about how that turned out, especially since in the first time in my life that I'm doing something remotely like this with wood...
I'm quite happy about how that turned out, especially since in the first time in my life that I'm doing something remotely like this with wood...
Went to the woodshop today, and got myself a piece of maple... It's actually large enough to cut two full necks out of it...
With a lot of people around here doing multi-laminate necks, I'm wondering if it makes sense to carve a neck out of a single piece of wood? I guess it will be more susceptible to warping over time?
I'll finish my first headstock/neck prototype first, and then I'll start working on my chunk of maple...
With a lot of people around here doing multi-laminate necks, I'm wondering if it makes sense to carve a neck out of a single piece of wood? I guess it will be more susceptible to warping over time?
I'll finish my first headstock/neck prototype first, and then I'll start working on my chunk of maple...
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