bluesy

For hogging, though, it's gotta be a drill press.

Silly question maybe, but does anyone still use chisels?

I have just taken apart a very cheap asian guitar, and thought I'd share how they make the neck joint. The guitar has a plastic bowl shape back - like Ovation guitars. Here's a picture of the body where the neck bolts on, with the neck removed, and the butt of the neck itself.

As, you can see, the neck bolts on to 4 pillars molded into the plastic back. The sound board is just ply. You can also see the wedge shim they have added to the heel of the neck to achieve the neck angle. btw it wasn't enough, I will have to add just a bit more.

Some tutorials and books I have read just refer to "yellow glue", and some mention specific products like Titebond, Elmer's Yellow Glue.

I can get Titebond, but local hardware stores mostly carry other brands. In particular, there's this glue which looks like a very similar product

Web site here http://www.triton.com.au/product.php?id=52

It is about the same price, and is a creamy/yellow colour. Seems like a glue intended for exactly the purpose. What do you think?

I'm a big fan of not using whatever equipment the "others" are using, so I'd like to shy away from this if at all possible.

Well, I wanted something with a little more fidelity than the average stage mic I was used to, but a big delicate stduio mic wasn't really what I wanted either.

I bought a cheap LD condenser mic, the Behringer C1

It is quite solid and probably will survive more knocks than the more expensive studio mics. If it doesn't, well it was cheap anyway (under $50)

It really has a nice sound though.

Its just faster to remove the bulk with a forstner then clean up with the router. Its also quieter

It will put less strain on the router bits too. because they spin so fast, its also not a good idea to use a router to hog out wood... for safety reasons.

OK, thanks for that. ...going out to get a Forstner bit today

Just a quick question... Not being very experienced with router bits, I was wondering why some people use, say, a forstner bit to remove the bulk of the material in a cavity, then clean up with a router? Do the router bits wear out too fast if you use them to mill out the whole cavity?

These days, I prefer to bandsaw the body (duh, if you have a bandsaw), then sand down close to the line and route the final 1mm away with the router. Minimal chance of tearing chunks out of the side, and the router gives me a very nice, very smooth finish.

I will be trying a similar method, but using a jigsaw instead of a bandsaw. I have an older, but big and solid hand-held jigsaw that has survived much punishment builting speaker cabinets. I will see how it goes.

If you do use a jigsaw, take your time if you push to hard a broken blade is the least of your worries, what may happen especially if your close to the final body shape is that the blade may bend into the body so it will be undercutting it.

Yes, I know what you mean. It will be a very slow and steady job.

A quality jigsaw would likely work alright. When my old jigsaw died out on a template, I picked up a new one. It was the Hitachi saw(5.8amps), easily recognizable by the strange alien looking green saw. It was on sale for a few bucks off and had all that I wanted. I believe that thing could handle sawing a body blank. It says in wood it can cut 4 5/16", but I wouldn't want to do much more than a body blank in hardwoods. I love that little saw, its pretty wicked all around, kills that old saw I had that burnt out. There were more expensive saws on the shelves that I looked at as well, but that one had all the features I wanted and was well priced. For cutting the body blank I would cut carefully making sure to keep the blade as vertical as possible, I would also likely drill a couple holes in the sharp corners or tricky areas to prevent problems and make cutting the corners easy. I would then use a router with a template to finish up the final shape. Just another possibility. J

If I burn my jigsaw out, I will do the same. Drilling in sharp corners is a good tip, thanks.

So, when cutting the blank with the saw, I guess the idea is to get close enough to the outline so that the router cutter is taking off much less than it's own diameter in wood, to make it easy? Say, use a 1/2" cutter and try to get the initial saw cut within 1/4" or so? What I'm getting at, is that if too much wood is left to be taken off, you might as well just route through the blank to start with

When I didn`t had a bandsaw, I used to cut the body using a drill press to make several holes, each hole "touching" the last one, removed the sharp points with a chisel and then I used a router with the template.

Thanks Hector. Nice to know others, like me, resort to whatever methods they can. Sometimes you just have to make do, because I sure can't just rush out and buy a Bandsaw for this one job. Maybe if I get hooked on making many guitars I will buy one then.

Forget it - I finally managed to come up with some info. Searches can be hard to use sometimes.....

This really has been discussed to death. Start searching!

I must be stupid then, because I have been searching this forum and found nothing really. I am not saying it isn't there, just that I don't know the magic invocation to summon up the right threads.

OK, I don't have a bandsaw. What other methods do people use to cut out the basic shape from thick wood slabs?

- jigsaw?

I have a jigsaw that can JUST hack through 40mm or so of softwood.

- router?

is it practical to just route through the slab, going repeatedly around the template getting deeper each time, or will this just wear out the cutter (and my patience)

other methods??

Thanks for the great help. I can tell this place will be a great resource.

Some of you brought up the question of a heel. No, it doesn't have one. In fact, it's a very unusual construction cheap guitar from Asia. It has a plastic bowl shaped back like Ovation used, but with a bolt on neck. The neck screws are recessed deeply into molded holes from the back - i.e. no neck plate - unless it's internal.

I don't know what the front face is made of, probably some inferior wood, (even ply?), and the acoustic sound is unusual. It sounds quite nice with w small neck pickup however. It's a nice cheap item to experiment with.

Here's a picture from an ebay ad for one - I think it's funny how the bridge has fallen over, but the photographer hasn't noticed.

I have two reasons for asking. I am just getting interested in building solid body guitars, plus I have a cheap archtop guitar with a bolt on neck which doesn't have enough angle on the neck and so the bridge won't adjust quite low enough.

So, can you, or should you, use a wedge shaped shim in the pocket between the neck and body to alter the angle?

If building a guitar from scratch that needs the neck angled back (not just bolted in parallel) how do you prepare the pocket for the neck? Do you route as for a parallel installation, then file or chisel to achieve the angle - or do you use a wedge shaped shim?