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Scarf Joint


verhoevenc

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I agree, Devon.

That said, I will probably always choose to glue ears from now on. It was a real pain in my ass making a bandsaw jig and then trying to get the angles flat to one another. It looked "perfect" but it wasn't.

So, to answer the question:

I used a bandsaw and jig, but henceforth I will use a table saw.

Greg

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Big japanese handsaw for the main cut, following the line closely, clean up with a #4 stanley and a block plane. Best of cases, this takes all of 15-20minutes (which includes thinning the headplate bit of the scarf by saw and plane), a little longer if the cut is seriously messed up. I'm not sure a bandsaw would give me a more accurate starting surface.

As for tuning the surfaces, there's always the router jig option:

http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/tips/scarfjnt.htm

Since almost all my necks are mahogany, I quite thoroughly enjoy taking a nice, sharp plane to it, so I've never bothered building one. But if cleanup's giving you serious headaches, it's worth considering.

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What would be handy is if they had miter boxes out ther for 13 degree cuts. cause I know you can get like dovetail saw miterboxes that have the usual 90, 45, 30, 60 degree cutting guides... but i'm guessing 13 degrees would be a hard one to find lol

Chris

Build one....

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I use my table saw, but I tilt the blade to the angle I want. Then I attach a fairly tall auxillary fence to my saws rip fence. I hold by neck blank vertically against the fence and then I clamp a guide board perpendicular to the neck blank, that rides on the top of the auxillary fence. I raise the blade up a little at a time, and make several passes.

If my blade isn't tall enough I finish with a hand saw, but for my LP neck the blade worked out to be tall enough. (pretty extreme headstock angle)

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  • 2 months later...
What would be handy is if they had miter boxes out ther for 13 degree cuts. cause I know you can get like dovetail saw miterboxes that have the usual 90, 45, 30, 60 degree cutting guides... but i'm guessing 13 degrees would be a hard one to find lol

Chris

I built one, works fine.

Rocksolid,

would you post some pictures or a tutorial on the miter box? :D

Tommy

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I built a jig for my T slide on my bandsaw to cut them, clamp the wood and run it through, same T slide fits on my edge sander table to flatten them before gluing, takes less than 5 minutes to have a scarf joint ready for glue and from the ones I've tested, they never break on the glue join, ask Metal Matt, he saw me step on one, broke the wood, but never touched the scarf joint anywhere

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  • 2 weeks later...
If found the router is the easiest way:

http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/tips/scarfjnt.htm

and a video: http://www.guitarfrenzy.com/ScarfJoint.wmv

(got all this info from Guitarfenzy)

table saw:

http://pweb.jps.net/~kmatsu/htmlpages/scarfjig.html

I have to second the router approach. It worked for me like a dream. Once I made the slaigh, I had no trouble making consistent 13 deg scarf joints. I had only trivial hand planning. It probably could work even without hand planning. It is amazing to me how smooth and consisten a router cut can be.

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