Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by gary sheldon on May 7, 2014 at 8:31am

Matt,

I am going through some of that too.  I have one with a bolt on neck, one with a "slide in" neck that goes in 2 1/2 " ir so and another slide in that is glued.  Is it a concert? tenor?  Mine are soprano and concert.  With a bolt on I would add another layer of wood to the front of the box.  Then make some vertical ribs and glue them to the front and the bottom.  I would also put in glue blocks where the front meets the sides and bottom.

Permalink Reply by Chuck Cobillas on May 7, 2014 at 3:28pm

Matt,

I have been building CBUkes, Mandolins, & guitars  for a few years and have found this way to work well for me:

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/albums/mandolin-original-neck-b...

Feel free to look around at some of my other builds on my page. Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Chuck

Permalink Reply by gary sheldon on May 8, 2014 at 6:42am

Matt

  I changed that box from a white one to brown.  The reason is that the white one had no sound.  It turns out that the top was made of MDF, not real wood.  Fooled me.  Too bad, it was really nice looking.

  Here is how the strings are terminated.  I need to do a little reinforcing inside the box in that area.  It gets a lot of strain.  Also pictured is my non glue neck joint.  It seems to be holding up fine, although it is new.  The critical part is the glue joint under the two side pieces.  I want to be able to remove my necks without breaking a glue joint.    

Permalink Reply by Belfast Guy on May 27, 2014 at 4:39am

I screwed and glued from the inside after bracing inside the box where the neck meets. I sued two screws one towards the front and one to the back of the instrument to try and stop it pulling forward under tension.

The neck had a butt joined heel flush with the outside.

It seems to hold ok but I found the whole neck bent up when the strings were tensioned until I glued the box lid shut. Maybe internal bracing on the sound board would prevent that.

The glued down box is fine and still playing well after six months.

Keep building!

Permalink Reply by gary sheldon on May 27, 2014 at 5:30am

One way to determine if the sound board needs bracing is to put a straight edge over it, fore and aft and look to see if there is a noticeable dip near the center of the box.  If so, you need bracing.  This one is pretty bad.