Is this mortise/tenon joint big enough?

[Joz]

Hello everyone.

I've built a couple of bolt on guitars and this is going to be the first set neck guitar I make. I've seen "short" tenons and long ones going under the bridge pick up. 

The body of the guitar I'm building is 41 mm thick (1.61 inches) and the part of the tenon that would go under the pickup  would be too think (I think) to make any real difference so I've decided to make the tenon/mortise joint not go under the pickup. My question is: Is the tenon/mortise joint size good enough? 

The body is ash and the neck is maple reinforced with carbon fiber. The neck is going to be straight and co-planar with the body. and the thickness of the tenon is the same thickness as the neck.

The neck pocket length is 52 mm (2 inches) depth into the body is 31 mm (1.22 inches) and from the bottom of the neck heel to the bottom of the guitar there are 10 mm (0.4 inches) of wood. The pocket isn't a square since it has a contour for ergonomics as you can see in the picture. 

Thanks so much in advanced. 

 

[Bizman62]

That should be strong enough. I looked at my T-type which is somewhat similar, the pocket is from 40 to 60 mm but as it's relatively new it's hard to tell the longevity.

But I also have an early 80's Eko CX7 Artist where the bottom of the pocket is some 60 mm but the sides only half of that, further the roundover chews a significant amount of the sides. It has fallen and the neck has had a crack but the neck joint is still intact despite the abuse.

[Joz]

15 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

That should be strong enough. I looked at my T-type which is somewhat similar, the pocket is from 40 to 60 mm but as it's relatively new it's hard to tell the longevity.

But I also have an early 80's Eko CX7 Artist where the bottom of the pocket is some 60 mm but the sides only half of that, further the roundover chews a significant amount of the sides. It has fallen and the neck has had a crack but the neck joint is still intact despite the abuse.

Thank you for the reply Bizman62. Seems like given how strong wood glue is that the neck-body joint wouldn't be the weakest part of the neck and I doubt the body would bend with string tension causing tunning issues. I was just worried because I see all this talk about long and super long tenons. But I'll give it a try and see what happens. 

Thank you

Joz 

[Bizman62]

40 minutes ago, Joz said:

Seems like given how strong wood glue is that the neck-body joint wouldn't be the weakest part of the neck

Modern wood glues like Titebond Original are stronger than wood. In case a properly glued neck breaks off it's the wood that has cracked instead of the glue. I assume that if the cavity is good enough for a bolt-on neck, then it's good enough for a glued one. Agreed, the bolts can have a steel backplate for extra support but there's only four of them whilst on a set neck there's three linear surfaces plus an end grain joint tightly glued to become a single item.

Both with a bolt-on and a set neck a snug fit is the key.