#1-Mortisses, Tenons, Necks, and Jigs

Mortisses, Tenons, Necks, and Jigs | One aspect of this guitar build that has caused me no end of anxiety and trepidation is attaching the neck to the body. This is a critical joint and if it is not made properly, the guitar will never play well. This whole process makes me think of Thomas Edison's quote about developing the light bulb and the many "failures" that preceded the success:

“I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

I didn't really find 10,000 ways NOT to make the neck joint, but it did take about two weeks to finally get it done right (I hope).

My first attempt was to just do it all by hand. But before you start cutting and chiseling any wood you have to figure out the angle at which the neck must fit the body of the guitar. The neck does not run parallel to the body of the guitar; it has a slight downward slope that allows the string to project up toward the saddle:

I won't go through the process of figuring out this angle. If I did everything right, my neck needed to be attacked with a 89 degree angle. So with that in mind, I marked up the specs on the end of my neck blank and started cutting and chiseling.

Now here is the main lesson I am learning building a guitar - be patient, go slow and go small. When you are working in with tolerances that are less than a 16th of an inch, it is very easy to blow right past your specs, QUICK. I tend to hit everything like the proverbial bull in the china shop and this strategy does not work with precise woodwork. By the time I was through hacking and sawing, I had pretty much ruined that first neck.At this point, I really wondered if I could actually pull this neck joint off. There is a special jig that you can buy pre-made that will make this whole process a lot easier but it costs $200. Then I remembered that I could just build my own.

The jig was designed by Robert O'Brien (whose video course on building a guitar has been one of my main sources of instruction during this build). If you are at all interested in how this thing works here is a video that shows it in operation:

O'Brien makes the plans for this jig available to build one on your own. It took me about a week and a half to get mine built and dialed in to work accurately. But in the end, I was able to get the joint routed, fine tuned, and positioned correctly. This took a LOT of work and time and patience.

The body of the guitar is placed against a bar that is attached parallel to the board the neck will be attached to.

The board the neck is attached to is hinged to the top of the jig to allow the neck to swing into the proper angle in relationship to the body. The tenon can then be routed out at the right angle.

This whole process was very difficult, but I learned a lot. In terms of the whole build, this was one of the last aspects that I was worried about being able to actually pull off. Now that it is done, most everything left to do should not be nearly as difficult. I hope.