Wood thickness while making the scarf joint

[sofison]

Hi

I am wondering what is the thickness of the piece of wood you are using to make the headstock at the stage of scarf joint?

I mean the piece that is marked in the first picture below.

I generally like necks with volutes, although most of my necks have volutes that is formed from the wood coming from the neck and not the headstock piece (second picture)

Thanks guys

[killemall8]

I always make my neck blanks about 1/8- 1/4" thinner than my bodies will be. Obviously this only applies for set necks.

The thicker your neck blank is, the further down the neck the scarf will be.

[sofison]

I always make my neck blanks about 1/8- 1/4" thinner than my bodies will be. Obviously this only applies for set necks.

The thicker your neck blank is, the further down the neck the scarf will be.

This is right but usually after cutting the angle I take down the headstock piece to the desired thickness and then glue it.

With this method it's difficult to achieve the desired volute. That's why I am asking for proper thickness.

[pan_kara]

I cut the headstock piece from the neck blank when its 20+ mm thick (around the thickness of my bolt-on heel) but when I take the thickness down for the actual heastock I do it either after the glue-up or only do the part that will not be glued. An image illustrating my possibly failed attempt at explaining this:

after:

you can see I made a stupid mistake there with the headstock wings being too close to the neck so the volute ends up in a stupid place. But I think otherwise the geometry is in line with what you're trying to achieve.

[killemall8]

An easier way to do it is to leave the neck and headstock piece full sized, then bandsaw then to the correct thickness. That gives you way more room for a volute.

[RestorationAD]

Headstock needs to be 1" thick to make the scarf come up right. Bandsaw it to thickness after neck blank is glued together.

[sofison]

Headstock needs to be 1" thick to make the scarf come up right. Bandsaw it to thickness after neck blank is glued together.

thanks for that....

I draw this one a couple of hours ago and I came up to the same conclusion (more or less)

The red line shows the piece of wood before bandsawing.

It came up 2.7cm a little thicker than an inch.

[Prostheta]

This is exactly how I plan my headstocks out also. It is possible to scarf on a piece which is exactly the thickness of the destined headstock thickness and apply a "backstrap" in order to hide the join as it traverses the volute. Generally the headstock piece will encompass the entire volute as described.

I compared this to a scarfed Ibanez headstock with no volute, and they still use a 18-20mm piece which I presume is cut off a larger neck blank. Ultimately the only uses in using a thinner headstock scarf would be to move the join further towards the nut (this can reduce "first position hump") or to make subsequent headstock thicknessing operations less burdensome.

I personally dislike seeing any kind of join within the volute itself on the basis that it is a clash of angles to my eye. It makes the volute look "pasted on" and serves to overemphasise that the headstock is a separate piece of material.

Your CAD plan is more or less bang on. The volute can be less pronounced if it serves to reduce waste or helps produce a smaller initial blank. I presume that you plan to recover this piece from the underside of the neck as opposed to from the length?

[sofison]

This is exactly how I plan my headstocks out also. It is possible to scarf on a piece which is exactly the thickness of the destined headstock thickness and apply a "backstrap" in order to hide the join as it traverses the volute. Generally the headstock piece will encompass the entire volute as described.

I compared this to a scarfed Ibanez headstock with no volute, and they still use a 18-20mm piece which I presume is cut off a larger neck blank. Ultimately the only uses in using a thinner headstock scarf would be to move the join further towards the nut (this can reduce "first position hump") or to make subsequent headstock thicknessing operations less burdensome.

I personally dislike seeing any kind of join within the volute itself on the basis that it is a clash of angles to my eye. It makes the volute look "pasted on" and serves to overemphasise that the headstock is a separate piece of material.

Your CAD plan is more or less bang on. The volute can be less pronounced if it serves to reduce waste or helps produce a smaller initial blank. I presume that you plan to recover this piece from the underside of the neck as opposed to from the length?

Thanks for your answer.

If I got it right from your whole post you agree on what I've planned out.

Yes I generally use the piece from the underside of the neck but sometimes i cut it from the initial neck blank if it's too big.

I also tend to add thin pieces of wood between the 2 pieces to give a little more length if it's required and for aesthetic reasons too.