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So.... I have this neck tenon that I cut. After fully assembling, finishing, I finally noticed the neck angle was wrong. It needs to be reduced. It is not minor. To fully correct in situ, I would end up pushing fret 14 forward over 1/16 of an inch. Maybe more. I have considered disassembling and patching in a filler, recut, then use on a sunburst. That will work, but was wondering if any of you had ideas to reuse on natural finish body.

Mike

If the guitar is dreadnought depth, the multiplier is 3. That means that whatever is trimmed at the neck heel would result in 3 times that much at the bridge.
How much overset is it?
Correcting an overset neck rarely requires as much as a 1/16" trim, but even if it does, I would adjust by filling and recutting the saddle slot.

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John

Is the bridge on?

You could patch in a wedge as you suggested to correct the angle and then hide it with a purfling strip on the neck, at the neck and body joint. If you have an ebony end cap, do an ebony purfle.
If you have room on the bridge John's suggestion might be a better way to go.
Some banjos have just a shaded heel and shaded peghead on a natural body.

No. I am already down the path of making a new neck. I'll use existing neck in a sunburst. Unless I get some miracle advice lol.

If the implication is that the neck will be reused on another body, then you have the option of relocating the bridge.
There is no rule that says the 14th fret must align exactly with the edge of the body.
You could also remove the fingerboard and shift it on the neck.

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John

John offers some very good options. I would be inclined to adjust the neck angle and have the 14th fret slightly over the body and move the bridge back slightly since it has not yet been glued down. If you have scraped the finish off the bridge location it might be necessary to make a slightly wider bridge.
I am willing to make some small compromises to the design to fix minor mistakes. But some of us are not willing to do that, and I respect that. For some the only satisfactory solution is to remake the part to the original specification.

I suppose you could cut off the heel at the level of the back of the neck shaft and graft on a new heel.

It may still require a slight shift of the neck forward but probably less than 1/4 of what it would require otherwise.

You can fit the graft to the body as a separate unit and then fit that to the neck shaft.

No different than a stacked heel and lots less work than a new neck.

If you had to, you could install a wider saddle to satisfy intonation adjustments.

Here's a couple pics of something I did in a similar fashion.

I'm not overly fond of typical stacked heels myself so I figured, heck, if it's going to show, it might as well show a lot. So I made the heel out of ebony and I liked it. Call it a really thick heel cap.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

I believe that Mr. Melia indicated an over-set situation, so the 1/16" of material - about 4.5 cents of pitch change - would come off the cheeks just under the fretboard... making a new stacked heel ineffective with regards to addressing the cosmetics issue.

If the neck were under-set, the material would come off the heel cap end of the cheeks, without a scale length change of any import, but with possible reduction of the heel cap length to less than what the builder may desire. We saw some thrice-reset guitars with considerable reduction in heel cap length... not something which stands out for most players... more of a luthier issue.

Given Mr. Arnold's comment, I am assuming the measured fret plane-to-top distance on the instrument is something close to 0.570" - 0.590" or more over the top at the saddle location? If instead it is 1/16" high (0.425"-0.445" or so), then the trim on the neck cheeks under the fretboard would be in the 0.018"-0.020" range, which is around the 1.25-1.5 cent pitch change range... easily correctable at the saddle.

I'm with Mr. Arnold and others here on the 14th fret location: there is considerable variation to be seen, with some frets fully clear of the body, frets bisected by the edge of the body, and some actually inside the body line. If the bridge is not on, moving the saddle slot back by 0.030" and pin holes 0.020", then picking up the remaining correction with a rearward shift of the bridge by 0.030"-0.045" will all be unnoticed, but improve saddle stability, particularly with vintage-construction through-saddle designs.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Woodie G wrote:
"I believe that Mr. Melia indicated an over-set situation, so the 1/16" of material - about 4.5 cents of pitch change - would come off the cheeks just under the fretboard... making a new stacked heel ineffective with regards to addressing the cosmetics issue."

A stacked or block heel could work. It would reduce the amount that would need to come off the "neck" portion of the heel significantly because the heel block makes up the greatest part of the length. There would be some small loss of length to the neck, and one would have to accept the aesthetics of a stacked or block heel. If you added the heel in a fashion similar to how the old Martin guitars were made you could fix the neck with no loss of length - but you better have skills!
Personally I am not a fan of stacked heels, but I use block heels most of the time as (along with glued on pegheads) it allows me to use wood of smaller dimensions with less waste of materials. Aesthetically I find it acceptable, but others may not, and prefer to use one piece construction as was done during the time when materials were cheap and plentiful.

Here is a video of John Hall showing how the old Martin heels were constructed along with a lot of other great information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjndRsvuvf8

All in all, some really interesting ideas, But I really do not want to patch things (where it can be seen). So, I am building a new neck. Luckily, there is a sunburst up next that will be able to use a patch heel. Just have to disassemble the neck, patch, cut, assemble, paint. I forgot to mention that the bridge was on, but I took it off. I did not like the slot location, string angle was too sharp. So this plays into it as well.

This guitar is the prototype in the newly copyright acquired Grammer series. Mistakes will happen.

Mike, just curious how the mistake was made? I know you use the LuthierTool jig to set the angle. Was the issue with the jig setup?

I’ve talked to Chris about shooting updated videos of the jig in use. It’s on my backlog for now.


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Mike are you making the Grammer Guitars and bringing them back? If so very cool, we see them once in a while in our neck of the woods.