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Preventing Blowout When Using Neck Tenon/Dovetail Jig

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 7:47 am
by Todd Stock
Had another builder in the shop yesterday while I was milling tenons, and she questioned why I was using a sacrificial piece of stock between the Woolson-style neck jig and the neck blank. I like to mill the truss rod channel and do final dimensioning of neck shaft width prior to tenoning, so the milled edge left from tenoning needs to be very clean...especially with Gibson style block heels that will match the cutaway.

To ensure a clean, finish cut, sawn or routed joints need to be backed with a sacrificial piece of stock, but doing that on the Woolson jig can be a pain. Rather than mill a pocket in the angle board and have to insert a new backer each time, I use a 3" x 3/16" x 24"+ piece of scrap and mill a channel down the center for about 3/4 of the length to pass the truss rod channel alignment pins, then just slide the backer up each time I mill a tenon (I was doing six necks this weekend, with another three to follow in a few weeks).

Note in the shots how ragged the back edge of the backer is after the cut, and how clean the tenon and body mating surface is on the neck...works pretty well.
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Now to finish up the other five...
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