Shimming the side of a neck pocket?

[Bingo328]

While building my first guitar I noticed that after I routed my neck pocket that my template shifted sideways. The result is that I have a gap on one side of the pocket that is almost 1/8 at the top and tapers down until it is snug at the bottom. I need to cut a wedge or something to fix it. Just wondering how to repair this and how can I cut a piece of wood that small and that accurate without hacking off a finger or two? thanks much.

[daveq]

Here's what I would try:

Grab a piece of wood more than thick enough for the depth of the pocket and more than wide enough for the neck to fit into. Next, route a new neck pocket (all you really need is one side of the pocket routed) into this piece leaving the area you are fixing untouched. Then you can cut all of this new piece off except for the area that needs to be fixed - leaving extra to hold the piece when sanding / fitting. This is really hard to explain without drawing pictures - I hope you understand what I mean. Basically, I would take a portion of a new pocket and mate it with the mistake and throw away everything but the piece needed to make the repair.

To really mate it well, you could try to route the mistake to a normal shape. It would be a bit unpleasant to intentionally route into an area you know shouldn't be routed but it would probably help to get a mating piece to fit better. Are you using a pickguard - if so would it cover the mistake after repairing it?

[krazyderek]

i did kind of the same thing, well actually, i setup my routing jig for a retagular pocket, cause it was one of the first things i did after glueing the boards together and planing.... i'll probably just measure the angle relative to the side of the pocket that the neck is at and make a shim of that angle and shove it in there with some glue on one side... then sand it down flush and laquer it...