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Could anyone give me advise on making a five piece neck for a steel string
with a 25.4 scale. I wonder about how it is done: dimensions, is the center
piece effect by the truss rod plow? Whatever you can offer would be greatly
appreciated. I plan on using some combination of cherry maple walnut?

Thanks

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Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.

You're kind of all over the map with your question.   Draw it. Draw a side view; draw a top view; do it to actual scale. It will all drop into place.   If you can't draw it, you probably can't make it.

Mark, welcome to the OLF.

I make my laminated necks much like Charlie Hoffman.

I make my center piece 1/8" and the two secondary laminates 1/4" to make a total of 5/8".

Once the neck is laminated, it's stronger than a single one piece neck (this is why I do it, other than it looks great too). It's not effected by the truss rod slot any different than a traditional neck.

Doing the laminated neck like Hoffman renders two neck blanks but a fair amount of waste in the center. There are advantages to doing it this way in that lining up the laminate lines with a scarfed jointed headstock and stacked heal is somewhat difficult, not impossible though.

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Mark, welcome to the OLF.

I make my laminated necks much like Charlie Hoffman.

I make my center piece 1/8" and the two secondary laminates 1/4" to make a total of 5/8". EDIT: Than I add the outter pieces to make a total of 3". I think I need to go narrower to cut down the amount of waste, so I'll go to 2 3/8" total width and just add wings to the headstock.

Once the neck is laminated, it's stronger than a single one piece neck (this is why I do it, other than it looks great too). It's not effected by the truss rod slot any different than a traditional neck.

Doing the laminated neck like Hoffman renders two neck blanks but a fair amount of waste in the center. There are advantages to doing it this way in that lining up the laminate lines with a scarfed jointed headstock and stacked heal is somewhat difficult, not impossible though.

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My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

A laminated neck is not necessarily "stronger" as it's only as strong as the weakest lamination.   It's not necessarily stiffer either.   The advantages are that you can design the grain favorably and you can oppose grain to make the neck less likely to twist or warp one way or another. Also you're breaking up any weak grain lines at the laminate points.   I also believe that laminated necks have inherently lower "Q" than solid necks and therefore suck less energy out of string vibration. I've been a proponent and maker of laminated necked instruments since about 1969, by the way.   It makes for very good use of materials.

[QUOTE=Rod True] Doing the laminated neck like Hoffman renders two neck blanks but a fair amount of waste in the center. There are advantages to doing it this way in that lining up the laminate lines with a scarfed jointed headstock and stacked heal is somewhat difficult, not impossible though.[/QUOTE]

If you want to do the laminated neck with a scarfe joint and stacked heel and don't want the pain of carefully lining up the centre strips then do it as follows. Make the neck as normal with scarfe joint and stacked heel - or seperate one piece heel. Then cut the neck down the middle. Choose your centre laminates and cut them out to follow the finished neck shape - if you are using orphaned sides for the laminates you can get two sets of laminates out with little wood waste, much like you would cut two one piece necks from a big block. Then you glue up the five neck pieces - taking care with the clamping and cauls to get the right alignme,t - and true up the top surface etc when the glue is dry.

You could also do this with a one piece neck to save laminate wastage - ie use a big neck block, glue up as a five piece and cut out two necks.

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Here is how I do it.

I copied Charlie Hoffman too. Hey Rod and Rick!

It's fun taking flatsawn mahogany and other woods and making them quartersawn in orientation into some fine necks.

Good luck Mark. Get a Martin Blueprint and make you a neck template out of 1/8th inch hardwoods or tempered bath board. Trace around that and bandsaw out your blank. Plus, you can get dimensions out of Cumpiano and Natelson's book Traditions in GuitarMaking.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

I laminated the 5-piece neck for my first guitar in 1977, and have never made a one-piece.

There's no fixed formula for the widths of the center pieces, other than that they should look good and form a symmetric pattern (although I suppose even that could be played with on the right guitar; hmmm . . .).

Charlie Hoffman is a fine builder and repairman, but the practice of cutting two necks out of a blank is [even] older than Charlie. The block left in the center need not be wasted. I use it for the neck extension under an elevated fretboard, cut the sides off it for headstock wings, make tailblock laminates from it (looks cool), and even use it for laminated headblocks (here I hide the laminations). The rest goes for cauls, jigs, etc. I do have a pile of leftovers, but all in all laminating a block for a pair of necks is efficient use of wood.

"Only as strong as the weakest laminate." ??? As you say further on, Rick, a weakness in one laminate gets stopped and reinforced by its neighbors.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Waste is always a factor in woodworking, I suppose. Every time I've tried to set up a process to be as material-economical as possible it has cost me dearly in time, though. Your constraints may differ, of course. I set up my laminates like this:



That gives about 35% waste. The traditional two-blank to a block setup gives about 42% waste in ideal setups. Note that the shapes of the outlines give enough room to saw around the 'actual' blank shapes, so the waste % would actually be higher if we were calculating to the end-profile.

Coincidentally, if you put two more blanks on either side of the tiling I use to make it six to a block, you end up with a waste of about 41% (sort of back where you started)

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I see now. Thanks for the pic and the web sight. Charlie makes it look easy,
The widths of the laminates can be just about any size as long as you end up
with a blank that is big enough. Probably 3x4. It appears that one can take
plain saw material and by flipping the other way it ends up with the proper
grain orientation. Is this what you where referring to on "grain orientation?

_________________
Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.

You can do better if you scarf on your peghead. You can also nearly completely shape the peghead, thickness it, do the front overlay and even bind it before gluing it to the neck shaft.   I use the truss rod slot in the neck shaft and a matching slot in the peghead blank for alignment and put in a 1/4" wide piece of UHMW plastic as an alignment spline that comes out when the glue is cured.   This really makes it easy to do slot head's, too, on my pin router. The neck shaft isn't in the way.   After NAMM I'll post pics...

re: lamination widths
You do want to think about how the heel will end up looking- if you are doing a 'traditional' (ie narrow) heel you don't want a lamination line falling too close to the edge. With a 'jazz' style (wide) heel you have more latitude.

re: gluing together pre-laminated pieces (adding headstock or heel later)- this can be pretty tricky to keep in alignment, at least for me. A backstrap on the headstock can hide any problems in this area.

Cheers
John

One thing I think many builders do now a days is to use polyurethane glue for gluing up the laminates. Using an AR (titebond, yellow woodworking glue) glue of course introduces some amount of moisture into the glue up which can also cause warping of the blank after glue-up. Of course if you true up the blank (which you should do anyway) after the glue is cured, you can eliminate any warping from the moisture in the glue.

The polyurethane glue is a bit messy but doesn't introduce moisture into the glue-up.

I'm certainly not even close to an expert on the polyurethane glue up as I only heard of this about 2 years ago and about 3 years ago, I glued up enough neck blocks for several necks that I haven't used yet. But next time I make neck blanks, I'm planning on trying the polyurethane glue unless something better comes along.

Can any of those who use polyurethane glue for making the neck blanks speak into this please?

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] ... I also believe that laminated necks have inherently lower "Q" than solid necks and therefore suck less energy out of string vibration. I've been a proponent and maker of laminated necked instruments since about 1969, by the way.   It makes for very good use of materials. [/QUOTE]

Lower Q means higher damping, and more energy absorption. Did you mean to say "higher Q"?


Phil

No, I said and meant lower Q. You don't want a neck to be resonant unless you're looking for dead notes where the neck sucks too much energy out of the strings.   Ideal is high stiffness and low Q.   This, by the way, is a characteristic of ebony and is one of the reasons why a lot of folks like ebony fingerboards.   It's tonally pretty neutral.

And Howard, what I should have said instead of "strength" is "stiffness".   Laminating a neck does not in and of itself make a neck stiffer, and you are right that in a bar fight, a laminated neck will probably hold up better than a solid wood neck.

[QUOTE=JohnAbercrombie] re: lamination widths
You do want to think about how the heel will end up looking- if you are
doing a 'traditional' (ie narrow) heel you don't want a lamination line
falling too close to the edge. With a 'jazz' style (wide) heel you have more
latitude.

re: gluing together pre-laminated pieces (adding headstock or heel
later)- this can be pretty tricky to keep in alignment, at least for me. A
backstrap on the headstock can hide any problems in this area.

Cheers
John[/QUOTE]

So what I hear you saying is that the middle section could get to wide and
as a result the heal of the neck would need to be wider? Is that a
problem. I guess it impacts aesthetics?

About this "Q". This is the first time I have heard of this. It makes me
wonder about the wood I am using. domestic stuff. You know cherry
maple oak?

What is meant by "opposing grain"?

_________________
Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.

Cherry makes fabulous necks. Oak is kind of funky.

As you look at the end of your laminate lay up, the grain should look like (((I))) or )))I((( with whatever layup you choose to use.   That will yield maximum stability.

[QUOTE=mark11]
So what I hear you saying is that the middle section could get to wide and as a result the heal of the neck would need to be wider? Is that a problem. I guess it impacts aesthetics?
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
You don't want the lamination glue line to be exposed on the 'side' of the heel. Plane a scarf on plywood and you will get the idea.
Also, unless you are pretty confident that things will align perfectly, it's probably safer not to have a narrow 'center line' laminated into the neck, as folks tend to see even a slight misalignment when you provide them with center lines. I usually use about 1/4-3/8 center strip, then veneers and the outer layer. A few minutes with some scrap will tell you what will work. The thickness of your stock, and your neck width at the body, will tell you how thick that middle layer has to be. (As others have suggested, use scraps to glue on 'ears' for the headstock width- again, diagram this out as you probably don't want glue lines showing more than necessary.)

Cheers

John

[QUOTE=JohnAbercrombie] [QUOTE=mark11]
So what I hear you saying is that the middle section could get to wide and as a result the heal of the neck would need to be wider? Is that a problem. I guess it impacts aesthetics?
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
You don't want the lamination glue line to be exposed on the 'side' of the heel. Plane a scarf on plywood and you will get the idea.
[/QUOTE]

It doesn't seem to bother George Lowden and it doesn't look at all bad:

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

IMO you really want to glue up the neck blanks in a glue press, which
is just a pair of dead-straight hardwood or metal side members to take
up and even out the clamping pressure.  I use a pair of 2" x 45"
aluminum angles (these I used for neck-thru bass necks), smaller ones
for guitar necks.  Leave maybe an inch of the blank exposed at
either end so that you can clamp them flat to a table and keep the lams
from floating up as you squeeze the sides.

Ok, There seems to be very little or no negatives with a five laminated neck.
I am thinking this is the way to go.


This is my first time to be engaged with this forum. This is awesome. You all
have shared great insight and experiences. Luthiers are amazing wood
craftsmen. As a first time builder I can't express how valuable this has been.
Thanks you for sharing your craft.JavaScript:AddSmileyIcon('[=D%3E]')

_________________
Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.