Beginning the neck - The V joint part 1

The neck of my guitar will be made up of three pieces of honduras mahogany. The largest piece is the neck itself which is the long piece that can be seen in the foreground of this photo. The fingerboard will sit on this piece and it will contain a graphite support rod.

The second piece is the headstock, which holds the tuning heads and is joined to the neck with a 14 degree V-shaped joint. The final piece is the heelstock which is the large piece of wood in the background of this photo. It is sitting on top of the headstock piece.

In this photo my trusty straightedge (from Steward-MacDonald), a set of calipers, two palm planes and a Stanley Block plane.

The first step is to dimension the rough lumber to the required size. The top of the neck is leveled and one reference side (the treble side) is squared exactly. The other two sides are roughly planed and squared for easy marking.

The headstock is squared up and brought to exactly 18mm thickness. Both of the longer sides are squared, as is one of the end-grain sides. Planing end-grain is tricky but not impossible with mahogany. In the photo I am using a small low angle plane to shave small amounts of wood from the end-grain. Dampening the end-grain with warm water helps with this.

After this I marked the V shape on both sides of the flat headstock piece. It is important to measure precisely as even tiny differences between the sides can make constructing the joint impossible.

Once the V had been marked with a knife, notches were cut into the surface on the inside of the V. This makes cutting on the bandsaw easier as the edge is more visible. It also helps make a clean surface to construct the flat surface between both sides of the V.

I then cut the notch out on my 9" bandsaw. My bandsaw is one of only 4 power tools in my small workshop, along with a drill press, a hand drill and my beloved shopvac! The bandsaw isn't very big, but it is a huge time-saver and very useful.

I then created a new flat surface between the two sides, by taking tiny bites out of the ridge shown. Each chisel motion starts at the knifemark notch and continues to the centre of the surface where the ridge is formed. Eventually the ridge becomes less and less pronounced until it is flat.


The tight inside of the V is cleaned out periodically with a sharp knife.


In part 2 I'll show the other side of the joint, the gluing process and the final result.