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Working on a new neck design - thoughts?

Hi all,

I've been thinking recently about the design I use for my necks, which is currently neck-though, with a recess carved out. As I use homemade boxes with thin lids, I need to accommodate bracing on the underside of the soundboard, throw pickups in the mix and I have a serious weak point. One of my 4 stringers has developed a bow, and I believe it is coming from the recess.

This is the recess cut out for a 3 stringer with a homemade box - this one is still solid but you get the idea of how much material I need to remove to allow for the fretboard standing proud of the soundboard, and also the bracing underneath.

The neck wood I have most easily available is oak, in lengths of roughly 1 metre, here is a proposed design in which the neck is cut and re-glued into supports.

[Apologies it's so poorly rendered - 5 minutes in Paint!]

The overlap forming the heel would be maximum about 150mm/6", the blocks underneath would be the same width as the neck, glued to the box and screwed from underneath to the neck - do you think this would be strong enough for a 3 or 4 stringer? (I haven't ventured into truss rods yet, nor do I have a router.) I feel that this needs to be the direction I move in so I can start messing about with resonators etc. without compromising the strength of the neck.

Your thoughts as always would be greatly appreciated.

Rick

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Permalink Reply by Richey Kay on March 26, 2014 at 7:07pm

[UPDATE]

I've now used this design on my last 3 builds, and the 4th is nearing completion. It works brilliantly, and I could have saved myself a lot of work and headaches if I'd used it earlier. I've updated the diagram to show what the final design looks like:

As you can see I've done away with the block in the middle. The block at the front of the box is a little lower (1-2mm) than the block at the back, depending on the length of the box to give some back angle, and the neck is secured to the box with 5 screws; 1 through the back of the box and 2 each end through the blocks and into the neck. The blocks are glued to the box for extra rigidity.

Here are a couple of necks using this design. The upper part of the neck running through the box is chiselled away if needed to make room for pickups/bracing.