Scarf Joint On A 3/4" Neck Blank?

[fyb]

I already have a few quartersawn maple neck blanks, roughly 4"x30"x3/4". Would these be suitable for making a scarf-joined headstock or should you start with thicker material? I was also thinking about using sapele for the headstock if I could get away with it. What do you think?

[WezV]

yeah that will work fine. the scarf joint will be closer to the headstcok transition than it would be if you used a thicker peice of wood - not a problem though

[prs man]

I use 3/4 with no trouble.

[adamkohn]

the dimensions of the wood are fine..however you may have trouble with the quartersawn neck warping or doing weird things down the road.. maybe give flat sawn maple a try next time

[ihocky2]

Quartersawn is the preferred orientation. It is stronger, changes size with moisture changes less, and is less likely to warp. But is harder species of wood flat sawn is prefectly acceptable. If you're using something soft like poplar, you would never want to use flat sawn, quarter sawn only.

Fender uses flatsawn for availability and pricing reasons. You get less quarter sawn boards from a log, therefore resulting in a higher cost. So availability is less and the price is higher. Flatsawn generates more boards from a log, with some quarter resulting anyway. It wastes less wood resulting in a lower cost per board. So flatsawn is more common and lower priced.

[postal]

You *want* quartered. Ihocky, myself, and MANY others would disagree with what Adam (newbie with 1 post) stated.

I buy flatsawn and resaw and re orient the wood to 2 piece quartersawn necks if I dont do multi layer laminates.

You can do a scarf with 3/4", but 1" is preferred because it moves the joint farther down the neck away from the neck to headstock transition. This is important to having a nice clean look since the glue line right in the transition becomes very large and noticable.

The main thing, even with 3/4", is to glue the scarf before thinning down the headstock to final thickness, and removing the excess material from the headstock from the underside. This pushes the glue line farther back. If you scarfed 1" wood and removed the excess wood from the headstock from the front side, the glue line would be right in the transition. Get it? Draw it out if you dont, and draw the final headstock thickness if removed back, and if removed front to see the glue line/transition-

Another good option for you is the 'alternative' scarf method of glueing the scarfed headstock to the underside of the neck blank and using a headstock veneer to hide the glue line on the front face. It's a perfectly acceptable practice.

[Woodenspoke]

the dimensions of the wood are fine..however you may have trouble with the quartersawn neck warping or doing weird things down the road.. maybe give flat sawn maple a try next time

As everyone else has said this is just wrong information, maybe you got mixed up is all.