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Great post Waddy had on his V-neck joint, I happen to be doing the exact same thing right now.

I’ve always thought the appearance of the neck to head v- joint is beautiful joinery and a distinctive mark of craftsmanship. My first five guitars were scarf joints, so I decided to up the skill level on my next two with the addition of a v-joint. I used two resources: Joshua French’s tutorial in the OLF archive ‘V-joint Tutorial Revisted’ (viewtopic.php?f=10102&t=10511) and the Cyndy Burton article in American Luthier No. 63 Fall 2000 ‘Vjoint A la Geza’ outlining Geza Burghardt’s method.

I mostly followed Joshua’s tutorial, however there are some useful tool templates shown in the GAL article and a nice tip; dampening the end-grain slightly helps during fitting. With a sharp paring chisel the wet end-grain cuts-off neatly in a fine slurry.

I made two attempts, first with no back plate and the second with an Indian rosewood back-plate. It all went fast except the fitting process, which took a couple of hours. I ended up with a decent fit on my first attempt and a better fit on my second attempt. A few more and I think I could speed things up with better results.

Two things I didn’t anticipate, the expression of the V on the inside of the slots and ramp and the foreshortening of the V on the head by a little over 1 mm due to the 14 degree head angle I chose.



Set-up and mark-up






Beveling and cutting





Cutting the head V



Fitting



Glue up

Expression of the V inside the ramp



I’m planning on using some antique Landsdorfer tuners on one of these necks

I did three of those the other day; after a while you do get faster. I've never tried wetting the end grain. I just stop every once in the while to touch up the chisel. The trick, in any case, is what could be called the 'koan of lutherie': the slower you work the faster you get done. It's those tiny transparent shavings.....

Alan,

Three in one day! Wow, that's incredibly proficient, do you have templates like in the Geza in the GAL article? They look helpful. Geza claims he can do six a day in the article, whew.

I agree 100% with you on the continuous sharpening of the chisel during the work, you'll see in my first picture a granite slab with some 2500 grit taped to it.

What a great job, Marc. Why didn't I know about "I mostly followed Joshua’s tutorial, however there are some useful tool templates shown in the GAL article and a nice tip; dampening the end-grain slightly helps during fitting. With a sharp paring chisel the wet end-grain cuts-off neatly in a fine slurry." That's worth a lot, particularly to a beginner. I did it all dry, and it took me a whole day to do what I did. Three in one day, WOW! Maybe some day! I did it three times, though, does that count?

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Waddy

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Thanks Waddy, The first one I did was painfully slow, the second was much more bearable. Even still, I could have cranked out 5 or 6 scarf joints in the same amount of time.

It looks great, Marc!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I know about painfully slow. The one I trashed took me two full days in the shop to tweak to a fit. I'm talking weekend days - real full days, not two hours in the evening.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Thanks Arnt,

Waddy, I know what you mean, the whole time I was doing the first one I kept asking myself, who thought of a joint that comes to a point.

If you want more of a challenge read the section titled "Head" of David Schramms research on Hauser, http://www.hauserguitars.com/hauser_contribute/beitrag_wildner_002.htm . Apparently Hauser's V-Joint doesn't go all the way through the head, like a blind dovetail. Also the V doesn't have straight sides, they are tapered so they lock in place. According to the article this was one of Hauser's last steps in construction, now that's confidence.

I think I saw a similar joint on a guitar that Gary Demos was building over on LuthierForum. It was a Louis Panormo Copy.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

No doubt the V joint is more labor intensive than the scarf joint.
It is however aesthetically much more pleasing, as well as being a more efficient use of wood than a bandsawn neck. Probably stronger than either as well though on a classical guitar, this is not a major concern.

What Martin used before 1915, and what I believe Hauser used, was a modified bridle joint. I saw examples of this at Julius Borges' shop. It's actually a fairly simple thing to do with a good table saw, and not as tricky to fit as the through V-joint, at least the way Martin dd it. Unfortunately, it's hard to describe, and does not come through well even in drawings. There is a picture of one on frets.com, as Frank fixes an old Martin headstock.

One thing I really like about the through V-joint is that, when glued with HHG, a sudden knock will simply break the glue line, rather than the wood. It's a simple fix: wash off the old glue and re-glue it. That can't be said for the bridle joint, nor for Taylor's finger joint.