Headstock Cutting

[unusual71]

what would be the best way, or any way, to cut the angle for a headstock out of a neck blank from stewmac...remember i need to use both pieces after. any ideas are great, the two i have so far are by hand, and with a bandsaw

[SawDust_Junkie]

Here is a link to a website with plans for building a scarf joint jig. This is how I made my jig and it works well. Just be sure to be very accurate with all of your cuts and make sure the little triangular supports are square.

If you do that and clamp your neck blank to the jig, it will give you a very clean joint that is easy to glue together.

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

[GregP]

This is pretty much what I did, but I didn't make a fancy jig for it, I just nailed up a quickie. The problem I found was that after the jig was made, my table saw wasn't tall enough, so I would have had to go in 2 passes. Now, that's not a HORRIBLE thing, and it'll still save time compared to a hand tool; however, it's not likely that you'll get an absolutely perfect cut (both sides 'meeting' exactly right) on a wide neck blank.

If the angle is more important than having a 'whole' headstock (which it should be), a good option would be to size your neck blank down to the right width for your table saw, and then glue 'ears' onto the headstock for the width that gets removed.

If your table saw can cut high enough, chances are that the leftover 'ears' that need to be glued on won't be structural elements anyhow, particularly if you use a straight string-pull style like a PRS headstock.

Greg