Randy Roberts' photo-essay on making a one-bolt adjustable neck joint [Pictures] - created 04-27-2008

Roberts, Randy - 04/27/2008.08:55:24
May your life's music always come from your heart.

First to give credit where credit is due.

Nearly all of the following is based on the 2 bolt adjustable neck joint developed by Mike Doolin and described in his article in American Lutherie last year. I would recommend reading his article.

All I have done is to be lazy and drop one of the bolts, and add an adjusting setscrew at the bottom of the heel instead of the second captive bolt. I think this ends up possibly even more solid a joint for transmitting the neck vibrations into the body than the 2-bolt method.

While I am really sold on the flexibility of the adjustable neck, it does introduce one small problem. I have always made the body first, and then made up the neck, trying to match the neck with the woods of the body. With the adjustable neck, you need the neck blank before you can make the neck block for the body, so you have to plan out the woods for both the neck and body at the very start. I’m not good at thinking that far ahead myself.

Below is a 1 bolt adjustable neck with all of the pieces apart but lined up in their proper order.

It’s really helpful to make a template for where the various holes will be drilled for the various bolt and screws

The ½ inch maple plate is marked with the template and the cavity that houses the captive bolt is created as described in the captions.

This plate is then stacked on top of the ¼” maple plate, and the ¼”hole for the bolt is drilled through both of the plates at the same time.

Likewise, three 1/8” holes are drilled through both plates at the adjusting screws locations.

These holes are used with 1/8th pins to keep the plates from moving around when they are glued together to make the ½”plate/captive bolt and washer/ ¼” plate sandwich. They are later drilled out larger for the setscrew adjusting screws.

Take the neck blank and cut two slots within the body of the tenon, extending back safely short of the profile of the bottom of the heel. 2 slats of maple are thickness sanded to just fit into these slots. You want these reinforcing slats' grain to run vertically, as these end up being what the barrel nut pulls against when the finished neck is tightened. Glue the slats into the slots.

It’s a good idea to mark up the neck blank with where everything is supposed to be, so that you end up with enough extra waste at the face to allow for mistakes etc. As the last step of making the joint is cutting the tenon off, this waste allowance keeps you safe through most of the making of the joint

I try to still have about a 1.5 degree back slope to the neck with the neck joint. (This could just be cranked in when the guitar is finished, but by cutting the neck cuts at this angle it leaves more range of motion for adjustment without the tenon sticking out visibly).

To make the longitudinal cuts at this angle, I glue a scrap shim at the bottom to tip the neck the needed amount.

Cut the side faces of the tenon to leave a tenon of about 1 inch width.

Cut the face of the joint at a 1.5 degree angle, leaving plenty of the waste wood intact.

You can then cut the shoulders of the tenon on both sides with a bandsaw, by pressing this cut face flush to the fence. Note the angle of cut in the picture

Use the template to mark the location of the bolt hole into the tenon. OFFSET THE TEMPLATE DOWNWARD BY THE THICKNESS OF THE GUITAR TOP! This will leave the bottom of the fretboard in line with the top of the guitar when it all goes together.

Drill a ¼ inch hole for the bolt to pass through. I use the fretboard face of the neck to align this hole so that it will be perpendicular to the side of the guitar body, not at a 1.5 degree angle .

This hole needs to extend a little ways past the barrel nut’s hole so that the end of the bolt doesn’t bottom out. This hole will need to be slightly reamed up and down to allow free movement of the captive bolt, but save that step for last.

The barrel nut I use. The hole for it should be just slightly larger than the bolt so it is free to rotate in it’s hole.

If you mess up the alignment of these two holes, you can just plug the hole with a glued dowel, and drill it again where it needs to be.

Place the blocks that will make up the mortise sides on the shoulders of the tenon, and mark the tenon for it’s final length.

Cut the excess tenon off, again at 1.5 degrees back slope.

By using the tenon and shoulders of the neck as a mold, you can make a perfectly fitting mortise and tenon.

Lay a piece of waxed paper or 3mil plastic between the neck, and the mortise pieces. Glue up the the plate to the side blocks, tighten the captive bolt/ barrel nut . Make certain the centerline of the mortise aligns with the centerline of the neck, as this is what will determine if you end up with a rotation along the axis of the neck in relation to the body, or if everything will line up properly.

Drill and tap threads in the 3 holes of the neck block for the size and thread of the set screws you are using,

Drill and glue ¼” diameter brass rod plugs in the neck for the set screws to bear on.

The finished neck blank looks like this.

Once the body is completed, router away the top and side wood covering the mortise cavity. (Do not router away the back wood covering the cavity).

Once the neck and heel profile is completely finished, insert the neck into the mortise and scratch the outline of the heel’s profile into the side. If you jump the gun on this step, any further shaping, finish sanding, etc. of the heel of the neck will leave you with a gap between the neck and the edge of this recess.

router away about a 1/8th to 3/16” recess inside this line for the neck to sit within this recess.

I make up the heel cap but wait to glue it on until I'm done playing around with the adjustments of the neck. This lets the heel cap sit with just a little gap between it and the surface of the body.

The aim of doing the neck joint this way is to have the flexibility that an adjustable neck gives you after the guitar is completely finished, but in a way that isn't noticably different from the usual neck joint people are accustomed to.

That's pretty cool Randy, well thought through, and very well executed. Looks like it works great. Thanks for sharing!

Excellent tutorial!

Impressively well thought, and realised, and illustrated.Three times BRAVO Randy. It is very clean!

So, if I understand correctly, the three pressure points are brass on steel? For my much less refined classicals, I chose some years ago a simpler one bolt and three adjustable pressure points system too... but the steel is on the neck side and the box side is just reinforced by rather thin 1.5 mm bone plates. More "amateur" than yours, definitely, but it works quite well too.

Do you think I could improve by electing brass in place of bone pieces, or reversing the steel heads in order to place them on the box side? Of course the efforts are markedly less with nylon strings. The Viennese just used wood on wood.

Great tutorial, Randy.

How do you route the neck pocket?

Wow - impressive! Thanks!

That's very good, Randy! But I still wonder why you went for the one-bolt approach, instead of two. It doesn't seem to make a lot of difference once you get everything finished but it does look like it would be a lot harder to adjust it. But then, I have only tried the two bolt method.

This is awesome! Thanks, Randy. Timely, too, as this is something that I've been wanting to do for quite awhile, and that time is drawing nigh.

Alain:

As to a difference between brass and bone for the bearing surfaces, I really don't know, but I would think you could see a difference in the sound. The one I recently posted, for a time had the bolt bottom out in it's hole and this kept the adjusting screws from contacting firmly. There was a drastic change in the sound for the worse. It gave me a pretty dramatic demonstration of how big a part of what we hear is from the neck, not just the top.

That guitar is just a few miles away(commissioned by a relative)so I've continually made up excuses why I need to get it back to play around with. It's currently got 4 different saddles of various heights and materials, and there are definitely different sounds to each of them even with fairly small differences in the saddles. I would think the materials that make the interface that the neck's vibrations pass through might be noticeable as well.

That's one of the great things about the adjustable neck. It lets you do A / B tests changing just one thing, with A and B being truly identical guitars. You don't have the million variations between two different guitars clouding the experiment.

John:

I'm not sure what pocket you mean. The mortise is formed around the tenon rather than routed out. The 1/8th inch recess for the neck and heel to sit down into the side is just routed with a laminate trimmer and spiral downcutting bit......think big pearl inlay cavity (g).

the rest of you:

Thanks, but the credit should definitely go to Mike Doolin. He's who sweated all this stuff out. His article is really good and will probably make more sense than this does.

All I've done is leave some stuff out.

Nice presentation. Exceptionally clean tools!

I think John wants to know how you routed out the pocket in the body for the neck to sit into.

This is a super presentation,the pictures are clear and very informative to a beginner like me. I have just two questions, would this system work on a cutaway and would the bolt and fixing which LMI sell for bolt-on necks work instead of bolt shown in the essay?

Mark:

1. A little less work to make both the neck block and the drilling out of the tenon.

2. If I’m remembering correctly (I only did one 2 bolt) the lower bolt is also your adjustment for the neck angle, and so if you take the neck off, you have to redo your adjustments all over again. I don’t remember ever removing the neck on the 2 bolt I did once it was dialed in, so that worked fine. When you take off the neck with the 1 bolt, all the adjustments are right where you left them. I’ve had this neck off 40 or 50 times so far and it goes right back on with the action and everything pretty much unchanged. It takes maybe 2 minutes to take off and back on same as it was, if you don’t remove the strings. For a pro like you, I don’t picture wanting or needing to change it much once you have it dialed in where you want it. It goes to the customer, and your on to your next one. For a hobby builder like me, the ability to play around endlessly is great. This one bolt is the best thing to happen to me since the 5 speed manual transmission. I’m thinking the 1 bolt would be easier to adjust, but I didn’t play with the 2 bolt, and as I think about it, turning the lower bolt would be no different than turning the lower set screw, so ease of adjustment looks like a wash either way.

3. The 3rd (lower)set screw seems more secure and solid an attachment to me than the somewhat “floating?” lower bolt of a 2 bolt. Whether it actually is, and whether there would be a whit of difference sound wise, I don’t know.

4. But then you probably wanted the truth didn’t you. I had one heck of a time getting a 2 bolt drilled out to where one or the other bolt wasn’t binding up. I could get one or the other right, but not both. The first attempt had more plugs in it than tenon and finally went up the chimney. With one bolt it’s much simpler for me to get it right.

5. It’s just so darn much fun to play around with.

John:

Yes there is no problem using this with a cutaway, although I’ve not done so myself. The guy that developed this joint in a two bolt version, Mike Doolin, uses it in his double cutaway.

I don’t know how you could use a normal bolt on system for this. The key to the adjustability is the bolt (or bolts) and the nut anchoring them being able to rotate as you change the angulation of the neck.

Thanks, Randy. I have a tool steel drilling jig that was made for me, and the heel of my neck fits right in there and there are holes for the drill, both in the side of the tenon and the end. Everything always lines right up!

To me, it would be easier to adjust the two-bolt. I have a long handled T-wrench with an allen wrench welded on the end for the bolts, and this will fit into the end pin hole in the back of the guitar. With the two-bolt system, it's all I need. The two upper set screws once set can be left alone. When I need to make an adjustment, all I need to do is slide that long wrench into the end pin hole, loosen the top bolt just a bit and then give the bottom one a twist, and tighten the top bolt to firm it up. That's it.

For this one-bolt system you'd have to move both the allen screw at the bottom, and the one bolt, and you will need to tighten the bolt all the way in order to see what the adjustment did. That's two different wrenches, and you might need to repeat it a few times to get it just right. But that's just my thoughts, and you sure did a good job!

Mark,

Do you loose your adjustment if you take the neck off with your 2 bolt?

Do you loose your adjustment if you take the neck off with your 2 bolt?

I guess so. But it never bothered me too much. I can put a piece of tape on the end cap of the neck to line up with the back if I want to, but if I have the neck off, I have the strings off too, and it's pretty simple to just put the neck on, get it close, put the strings on and then a twist or two get it right where it's supposed to be.

All this just shows there's more than one way to do it!

Randy,

How are the set screws inserted. Specifically, what is treaded for them to hold against? Did you use a threaded insert? Is the wood tapped? If the wood is tapped, will it hold? Can you adjust them while under tension without the threads stripping?

Thanks.

Thanks Randy, I understand the reason for the barrel now, its just I used two barrels in the first neck I made from W.Cumpiano's website and I thought there must be a better way. I was also wondering about how the Set screws hold under pressure.

Randy - How do you handle the fret board over the top? Does it float or is it somehow attached?

I think John wants to know how you routed out the pocket in the body for the neck to sit into.

Yes, that's what I meant to say. What does your template look like and how do you attach it to the guitar body?

Randy,

I should try other contacts than the ones I quote but I am much lazier than you are. Sure.

Randolph,

Steven,

You can do either floating or attached. The most recent one the owner hasn’t decided yet. I gave him a medium size metal clip (like you get at office supply stores) to put on and take off to clamp the end of the fretboard to the top at the soundhole to help him decide which he likes better. If you take the metal “handle” wire out after its clamped on there’s just enough clearance for the strings that it can be played without buzzing.

If floating, then we will probably just leave the fretboard as is. If attached, then I’ll plane down two long triangular shims of ebony to glue to the underside of the fretboard just in from the edges, and then glue just the soundhole ends down to the top with 2 spots of glue. That would mean you may have to unglue to make a big adjustment, but small ones there should be enough flexibility in the fretboard to not be a problem.

John,

OK, now I understand, sorry to be so dense. The pocket for the heel is just freehand routed. Start in the middle, and then just walk your way out to the line you scratched in the side marking the edge of the heel on the side wood. As you get near the line just take very small passes to walk up to the line.

Alain,

Wow! I like it a lot! And the Phillips screws are a much simpler, more elegant solution to the bearing points than the setscrew method I’m using. Thanks for showing this. I'm not sure if I'm quite clear on the bolt, it is accessed from the ice cream cone side as originally done?

Do you know if your source for the hardware might also still make the old tuners like on the 1830’s Stauffer-Martin guitars? The kind that have the machines in a cavity in the peghead, covered with a brass plate? I would love to find a source for those.

Randy,

The bolt hardware is, unfortunately, the only piece our German makers are still producing. It is bolted from outside, standard way. For the tuners it is a big problem. You have to build the thing yourself or buy Rodgers replicas, well built... but heavy, expensive and not in the character of the originals. Or find a Viennese guitar in awful shape with a preserved head...a miracle. A good Stauffer-like guitar would be difficult to find at less than 20.000 € now you know how collectors are. The decorated "silver" plate is also not so easy to replicate. I asked several time the nice Rubner family if they were planning to restart that for the small bunch of old Viennese guitar fans that remains. But they said no.

Hey Randy,

Thanks so much for this tutorial. I have a bunch of sketches I've made trying to figure out the easiest way to do this... now I can just throw them away. Well done & thanks again for sharing.

Dave

Hey Alain. Where in Germany do you buy this Stauffer-like stuff (bolt)?

I think I'll follow your contact surface improvements on my old stauffered guitars. I need to setup four or five necks. I think it would be a nice idea using bone for the contact plate/shim. Also the small screws will help with neck alignment, sometimes it involves a lot of shim trimming to get it right. This will make it much easier. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Paco,

Very nice work, Randy. I really like the clear shots of measurements and marks that takes the guesswork out of the whole explanation.

I've read and re-read the Doolin article in AL many times to make sure I had every point covered. I wouldn't call your method an improvement OR a detraction from that design, just a little different.

I understand your point about one bolt over two. The three set-screws can do just that: set. Once you have your action/intonation dialed in, you could pull the neck as many times as you want (for whatever reasons those might be), and it would always go right back to the same place. With two bolts, one is holding the neck on, but the other is both holding the neck on AND providing your pitch setting. If you take the neck off, you still have your yaw set, but the pitch must be re-set every time. Honestly, I don't know if that is much of a bother, but twisting on just one bolt inside the soundhole sounds better than two.

One clarification: the captured bolt is really just to make sure it never goes anywhere and keep the heel looking clean, right? With the 3 set-screws on their bearing points, the bolt could just go through the heel and be exposed, right?

One could probably use two bolts but with the third bearing point at the bottom if you were concerned that one bolt was not strong enough. That was going to be my modification to the Doolin design if I ever got around to trying it.

Using the third bearing point sort of eliminates the need for the captured bolts, as they are intended to stabilize the neck when the strings are taken off. And with the third bearing point, there will be no instability when the guitar is unstrung. Eliminating the captured bolts would make the assembly more simple to construct and possibly lighter.

-"Rubner in Markneukirchen fortunately still makes them. You can of course use simple bolts too. When classical guitars, the forces are really limited. I would bet a 2.5 mm. bolt would be enough. I used 4 mm. simple bolts for a long time. Rubner is along the standard thing, he uses a 4 mm. bolt too, with a nice clock key included in the (cheap) total."

Thanks, Alain. Their site and catalogs don't show some parts that some guys say they got from them. I'll email Rubner and ask about it. Certainly their stuff is really interesting.

Thank you Randy!

Hi Randy,

When I started with the Stauffer neck I built something that is a compromise that could be a solution for some players. The photo below shows an attempt of mine, done rather quickly in 2003 or 4 and it works all right. The lower pressure point is in fact what I call a counter bolt which pushes the neck' heel away from the body.

I did a mistake not choosing the same tool for moving the two screws.It was an experimental thing and my lutheris was not "soignée" but this can be improved on the same basis.. esthetics are important.

By the way, reviewing the litterature on adjustable necks I believe I can make a (very small) remark to your design. I think you do not need to lower much the tension bolt, I would modify your design slightly, putting the tension bolt maybe 1 cm. higher to maintain a good distance between the tension bolt and the bottom pressure point or counter bolt. Your photos are real nice. Are you in the 50 K limits?

If one really wanted to adjust action on the fly, then a change in the Doolin design to flip the bottom bolt around to be accessed from the outside (a captured bolt, with maybe only one little visible hole for a hex wrench) would be the answer. That's the cool thing about his design: the top bolt is in line with the set screws and does most of the holding, and the bottom bolt provides stand-off to adjust the pitch of the neck.

There seems to be a trade-off between one bolt over two. The Doolin design makes pitch adjustments quick, with less than a turn of the wrench, but may not be fast for neck on/off. Randy's take on the joint allows one to set-and-forget, even with a lot of neck on/off, but would require two bolts to be turned for a pitch adjustment.

In the practical sense of tone and ease of adjustability, we might be talking about deck chairs on the Titanic. But the ease of construction of one over the other might be another thing.

I love these neck joint threads. So many ways to do that cat harm!

THANKS sooo much for this!

I have a question in regards to posts 7-9:

Why is the cut in post #8 needed? I'm thinking that I could make the cuts shown in post#7, then, with the shim still in place make the cuts described in post #9.

Is it to reference against the fence to keep the cut straight? If so, could I use a shim that didn't sit proud of the edge of the neckblock and then cut the tenon is reverse order (shoulders then side faces).?

Just wondering If I'm missing something...

I've been thinking about trying one of these too. Nice essay.

Mark did your essay on the Doolin joint ever make it to the library?

I'd have to check, but I don't think it's there yet. You could also search yourself, Chris!

Man this is great! This is giving me a ton of ideas and things to think about.

Jason(48)

if you mean through the heel as in Alain's in (51, that would be much more convenient to access. With what I was trying to do, I wanted the neck to look as traditional as possible.

Barry

From the few I've built one bolt seems to be plenty strong enough.

"Eliminating the captured bolts would make the assembly more simple to construct and possibly lighter"

I think I'd have to disagree with you if your saying replace the captive bolt with the regular"free" bolt used on a regular bolt on neck. I picture that introducing a problematic degree of "slop" vertically when loosening the bolt, or removing the neck.

The beauty of Mike Doolin's captive bolt is, with the spring washer between the 1/4th inch plate and the head of the bolt (not on the shaft of the bolt), pushing the bolt up against the cavity you've made in the 1/2 inch plate, the shaft remains rigid when not tight to the neck. With the captive bolt, when you tighten the neck down, it just walks it's way up the bolt's shaft to right where it was before. Without the rigidity in the bolt, I see an opportunity for the neck to take a little different allignment each time. Can't say for sure because I've never tried it. I think the genius in Mike's approach is both the pivoting barrel nut and the captive bolt. I think there's a point to both being there.

Alain(51)

"The bottom pressure point makes the thing slightly less adjustable than the Stauffer reference."

It's much less convenient than yours. If you mean less range of adjustment, I see the depth of the recess for the neck being my biggest limit to the range of adjustment. Tilt it to far and the tenon starts showing. That can be altered by making the recess deeper and having more neck sitting within the recess to some degree, but if your wanting the 12th or 14th fret at the body, you can't move things around huge amounts.

as to the location of the captive bolt, I agree. I moved it up toward the fretboard about 1.5cm from the neck shown in post #17. that was the first one I did. It works fine there, but I thought it might be better for it to put more force on the upper pivot points than it does in that picture.

Jason(52)

I agree access from the back of the neck would be more convenient than from inside the body. Wouldn't either method take turning 2 things? You still have to loosen the tightening bolt to then adjust either don't you?

Art

Had to think about that one for a while but then it dawned on me when I walked myself through the process. You'd need teeth on both sides of your bandsaw blade. You could certainly make one of the cuts, but the other cut takes flipping the neck upside down and the shim is then up in the air, unless you've got a heck of a throat on your saw. The saw's post gets in the way. the # 8 cut gives you a big flat surface to press flush to the fence for both shoulder cuts.

A table saw might make some of these cuts simpler, but I've never used one as they scare the snot out of me.

In terms of convenience Allan Beardsell's solution could bring a lot. It looks really clever.

HAH! I knew I missed something!

If table saws leave you snotless, you should meet my radial arm saw... (-:

If you use a tenoning jig and a good miter gage it would be a breeze to cut. After all that's what a tenoning jig was designed for.

Thought I’d pass on some addition things to consider:

I don’t know if I made it clear. With the captive one- bolt I described above, the “wavy” washer goes between the ¼” plate and the head of the bolt - not on the shaft of the bolt. You want to have the washer pushing the bolt up against the socket you’ve made for it.

In another thread, Mario made the comment:

“and this is why I think the "one bolt" adjustable neck now shown on the board is a bad idea. betcha it wouldn't take long before an owner would overtighten and break something while adjusting the neck”.

Definitely something to consider as you think about whatever pros and cons there are to this joint.

And last, I asked Mike Doolin to comment on some of this, and this was his reply.

“I read through the thread, and it looks like everything is pretty

much covered. Yes, your version makes sense if you intend to take the

neck on and off a lot, registration is guaranteed. It is interesting

that the captive bolt idea helps with that - that wasn't the original

reason for it, it was intended to provide a rigid yet adjustable

contact point - but it's great that it had unintended benefits for

your version. My version is more user-friendly for the client, I

found that most people couldn't work a system that required adjusting

more than one bolt, and I wanted it to be simple enough that anybody

could adjust their action without having to call me for tech support.

I only put the neck on and take it off maybe two or three times

during final setup, and then the guitar gets shipped off and I'll

likely never see it again. So the fact that my system doesn't

"remember" the previous action setting is no big deal, especially not

as a tradeoff for having a system that any client can use.

It's fantastic to see so many people doing adjustable neck angle

systems, and that they're so varied! It's always gratifying to see

somebody using my system, but it's even better to see people trying

variations to suit their needs.”

As to his two bolt method described in American Lutherie:

"I switched it to the heel a couple of years ago, between the time of

the GAL presentation and its publication. The mechanism works the

same, the hardware is just turned around and the adjust bolt is now

captive in the heel, so it's accessed from outside.

But I thought it was pretty clear from the article that you don't

have to loosen anything, just turn the adjust bolt. I made about 5

guitars back in 2001, the first adjustable neck models, that had

three or four set screws and two bolts, which you had to loosen to

adjust. None of the clients could figure out how to work it, I ended

up on the phone for hours ("OK, now turn the bolt closest to the

soundhole counter-clockwise a quarter turn... no, that's the truss

rod..."). I knew I had to make it much simpler to operate.

Then it occurred to me that if there were just two set screws in a

straight line with the top bolt, the neck could pivot around them

without loosening the bolt. And then, if I made the bottom bolt

captive, I wouldn't need a third set screw. All of this is described

in the first two pages of the article, AL #86 p24-25. So every guitar

I've made from 2002 on has the no-loosen,

one-adjustment-does-the-trick version”.

I didn’t want to beat a dead horse, but thought the above might be of value for any of you that might be considering trying an adjustable neck

Thanks for sharing that info, and thanks to Mike , that's a great idea.

Where do you get the captive bolts? And is that what they are named or is that a name given to them because of their use?

I keep looking at this, and certainly plan on using an adjustable neck soon.

Did you cut or grind your knock down bolt to length? All I can find are 1 1/8" and then 2" long ones. Found them at Lockler and Woodcraft. Lockler with bronze finish and Woodcraft with black finish.

1/If you plan to order the stuff made in Germany for the standard solution just call it a "Stauffer halsschrauben".

2/Nobody is reacting to the Allan Beardsell's idea as presented in a recent AL. I am surprised, I was expecting some interest from adjustable necks fans. Looks fine to me. No comments at all? Is there an unexpected "cold war" between US and Canadian luthiers?

Chris, you need to cut them down. This is the best source I have found, order them in lots of 50 each- you can get both the dowel nuts and the bolts here.

Professional Hardware & Supply

Thanks Mark, they're on the way. I ordered the 3/4" cross dowels and the 1-31/32" bolt. I figured the 1-9/16" probably had more then 1/16" lead to it and that you want to get rid of any lead to conserve space.

Mark, I guess since you have a jig then it isn't nessecary to do the neck along with the neck block or is it? Is it safe to say if one wanted to they can make up a few neck blocks at a time and make them maybe a little tall so you could trim the bottom off to have it fit say a OOO as opposed to a Dread.

That's right- I use my jig to make up the blocks ahead of time. I also cut a notch in my mold the fits the slot in the neck block, and when I glue the block to the sides I put a dummy block in the neck block's tenon that sticks out a bit and fits into the slot on the mold. This keeps the block and the place for the neck tenon in exactly the right place as I glue up.

Can you post a picture of your neck jig so I can get a good visual on it? I have an idea of what I think it looks like. I'm planning on making one on my mini mill. I'm wondering if it has a removable tenon piece or and removable mortice side blocks so it could locate off the mortice and tenon. Maybe after seeing it I can see if I can design one and draw it up and start another discussion to see if you all see any problems with it.

Alain,

Chris,

With my last one, a 1 1/8th" bolt and 3/4" tenon and mortise depth worked out without cutting.

If your "cross dowels" are the barrel nuts, might the 3/4" cross dowels be a little big? As I visualize the neck tenon from the side view, a 3/4" barrel nut in a 1" tenon only leaves you 1/4 inch of thickness for the barrel nut to bear against when tightened.

Mark,

Man, your one really organized guy. I'd also really like to see some pictures of how you're doing yours.

I think it would be awful nice for down the road, when this thread gets to the Library, if we had a bunch of adjustable neck approaches all in the one thread, rather than a bunch of separate threads to somehow try to find.

I know that might be longer than Deb usually likes, but....would it be too late to somehow get my name off the title of this thread and maybe title it "Several approaches to an adjustable neck?

Randy the 3/4" cross dowel measurement is the length and not the diameter. They are 10 mm. in diameter or I guess 13/32". That's the same as yours isn't it?

Mark did a really good photo essay already on how he does his but it hasn't made it to the library yet, I checked. Although there is a discussion on one of his fatboy guitars that shows it. I'm almost sure there is another essay where he shows the whole opperation but I might be wrong. Look at this and you can piece it together.

http://www.mimf.com/library/swanson_fatboy_v2.htm

Ok, here's a photo of my two tenon drilling jigs. I think it should be clear how I use them to drill out all of the holes I need for the adjustable joint, or the standard stationary one.

Randy, if anyone used the Library search enghone to look for discussions about adjustable neck joints, all of them would pop up. it makes more sense to keep them seperate in case someone was looking for somthing specific.

Are the pins on the top of the mortice jig to compensate for the top thickness?

Right Chris, as long as each jig is placed with the top part against the body or the neck, the holes will come out in the right place.

Got it. I thought there were pins in the top of the mortice piece but now I can see that there are two holes in it not pins. The reflection in the photo through me off. Are the holes threaded? I'm thinking that if they were then a set screw could be used in them to compensate for the top body thickness and set against the top of the neck block when making up the neck blocks before hand and not in the body. How do you handle it when the block isn't in the body? Shim it ?

Yes, I use off-cuts from the top as shims. That is easier than set screws, because the shims are the exact thickness I need without any guess work or messing around.

Thanks Mark.

Any way to print off just the text and pictures of the tutorial and collect it together , maybe 2 or four sets of instruction per page? I've needed something like this ,hands on while on the bench, and i have no computer in the shop.Thx

You can save and print for your own use any discussion here, Rory. Your browser has a "print" function, if you don't know how to do it maybe someone can show you.

Where do you all get your wave washers? What size and are they over sized so that it catches the outer rim of the bolt? I have read the AL artical and Mike says 8 mm. but the ones I've found look small as to the OD of 15 mm.

I just got mine at the local ace hardware store. If it's large enough to fit over the shaft of your bolt (even though that's not where you put it) it should be large enough to work fine.

I measured the knock down bolt head and the 8 mm. wave spring washer will work fine. I ordered them from McMaster-Carr along with the set screws. I ordered the 5/16" screws because they have the same size allen head as the bolts. Here's the info. for future reference.

#92168A109 1 Pack 50, Metric 18-8 Stainless Stl Single-wave Washer 8mm Screw Size, 8.4mm Id, 15mm Od, 0.8mm Thick ,$6.82

#92311A583 1 Pack 25, Type 18-8 Ss Cup Point Socket Set Screw 5/16"-18 Thread, 1" Length , $8.15