Official Luthiers Forum!

I am making my first steel string slotted headstock and was wondering weather I should cut the neck from one piece of stock
or use a thinner slab and making a glue joint.

How are you guys doing it?

I do mine in one piece.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

I do mine scarf joint style.

Thanks

I use a Spanish joint. See here, 2/3 down the page...

http://www.brentrup.com/page3/page3.html

I use the modified bridle joint for slot head steel strings..

slot heads should be 1 pc or bridle joint for best strength .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

What is a bridle joint? never heard of that?

Nuts.

...based on what logic, pray tell?

I think the bridle joint is one of the strongest constructions and fun to make, but there are a lot of slothead classicals out there with the scarf joint that seem to hold up perfectly fine.
The bridle joint has kind of a bird's mouth fitting into a ramp cut in the peghead. It was used by Martin long ago and is why the old guitars have a "volute"

there is a difference between classical stress load and steel string . It has to do with the ability of the joint to handle stress . If you are looking for the best possible scenario you won't beat the bridle joint or 1 pc neck ,, that is just a fact of the engineering of the structure . A scarf joint is a butt joint . With today's glues they should handle the stresses but it is the integrity of the joinery that will make or break the connection .
The bridle joint is one that can handle more stress than most any other joint . It is an interlocking joint . When you look at the joinery you choose look at the forces and how they apply to the joint . A scarf joint relies on the glue strength where bridle joints are also mechanical joints and don't rely as much for the glue for strength and to hold the joint .
Look at how the forces apply shear forces to the mating surfaces . A joint that is being pulled together is much stronger than a joint where the forces are pulling it apart .

Thanks Clay for the nice pictures of the bridle joint . As you can see , not only does this joint interlock , you have so much glue surface area and the forces that are applied to the joint are more compressive than shear making this a joint very efficient at handling the stresses.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Perhaps we all should have said IMHO.
The reason I don't care for the joint is that the point of one part of the joint is forced into a second at a place where there is not much wood to support it. This is much like an ax is forced into the end of a log near the edge...it splits off a chunk.
Here's Frank's repair of just such a break...







As you can see there is not much supporting the joint where the headstock is inserted into the neck. IMHO.

BTW, I use the Spanish joint on 12 strings with very heavy strings and it works as well as anything else. Any joint will fail if the instrument is subjected to the normal peghead break damage. IMHO.

My understanding is that the through V is designed as a release joint. If the headstock takes a hit, it'll break along the glue lines, and is more easily repaired than intersecting joints or broken one piece necks. I could be misinformed!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I would say that a Spanish joint combined with a back-plate is pretty much bomb-proof and also easy to do. My mine issue with 1 piece neck is that they are wasteful.

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Build log

A scarf can work just fine. Unlike the one-piece, it doesn't have short grain running through the headstock. There's no reason why a good glue joint needs to be a mechanical joint as well.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

As has been said, any joint (or non-joint) will break if it's abused enough. Any common head joint, or non-joint, will hold fine if it's done right and not abused.

I have had experience with the through V-joint as a 'breakaway' joint. Hot hide glue has very low shock resistance, and when the guitar gets dropped the glue breaks rather than the wood with this joint, if you're lucky. It's about as easy a fix as you could want: wash off the old glue with some warm water, and re-glue it.

The modified bridle joint is probably the 'strongest' joint, but it breaks wood when it goes.

I'd have to say that a good back strap is about as strong as the bridle joint. I've built a number of guitars with that, and used it as a repair technique when nothing else will make it. It can cover a multitude of sins as a repair, although it can be hard to blend in...

I tend to prefer a scarf joint to a one-piece, but that's just the old classical builder in me to some extent. It's probably not really any stronger, at least at the 'wrist' just above the nut. It might make the headstock itself a bit stronger, because of the grain direction, but it's hard to say. I'm not a big fan of the scarf where the headstock material ends up running up the neck under the fingerboard.

By the way, guys, what angle do you put on your slotted headstock? I've seen that Somogyi put a very low angle (somehting like 5°), to compensate the ''over-angle'' of the strings when they go down the slots. I just finished drawing a plan for an slotted head OM, and I was considering his thoery... but when I drawn it, it's was awfully unsightly... So I decided to do a compromise, and go with a 10°, that is pretty nice. How about you?

Francis

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

I normally run around 10 degrees, but I'm doing a couple right now with around 5. I think I like 10 better as far as looks though, and you can't hurt anything by going steep. F5 mandolins are around 15 degrees.

A scarf joint with ears, an overlay and backstrap is far stronger than it needs to be for either paddle or slot heads. The other joints are neat looking but seem to me to be unnecessarily complicated.

I have settled on 12* for my heads on my classical guitars. Seems like a good round number. Romanillos uses 7*, if I'm not mistaken, and that would probably give about 10* to the string angle for the g and D, which I'm sure is enough, but I think it looks a little shallow, esthetically. Personal opinion only! What it does do, is make the V-joint easier to do with a thinner cut of neck stock.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Visually I really dislike anything under 10. I made mine from 12 to 15, and 16.5 for pegs.

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Build log

Earlier Romanillos headstock angles were 7-9 degrees as he had seen other guitars be Hauser and other european builders that used that angle. For the past 15 years or so all Romanillos guitars have been at about 12 degrees. In Flamenco headstocks you see as high as 15 degrees but that is because they think that by angling the headstock that it supports more string tension but that is not true. Additionally on a non slotted headstock you can use a steeper angle as the string clearance is to the post and not into the headstock slot.

My suspicion is that if you measured the angle from the nut to inside the headstock slot where the string meets the barrel that on a less steep head it would still result in 12-14 degrees, relatively the same as a non slotted heastock's string clearance.

Hi Shawn,
Nice to see you posting here again.
Hope all is well with you!
Best

David

Another who's glad to see you posting again, Shawn. Between you, David, Joshua French, and Colin, I have learned most of what I know about building that's not in a book. I have missed your posts. We need more classical builders around here.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I'm not a classical builder......but I sure enjoy reading the posts. Learned a lot too.

I must admit, I'm unsure what an overlay is.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......