Making a fully bolt-on neck joint - Part 1 

Thanks! So far it is not available anywhere - I may get some made to sell though. Keep an eye on my TreeHouse Guitars instagram/Facebook page. :)

Yeah I’ve had to do what you mentioned a few times now. I rough shape the heel then hollow out some of the wood between the edges of the heel and the tenon so flossing works more effectively, then put the two bolts in loosely and floss. Tightening the bolts every now and then to check your alignment. Once it’s bang on then move on to routing for the extension pocket. 👍🏼

Perfect, thx!

No problem! :)

I’m pretty sure my tenons are 3/4” wide, but that’s mainly because my heels are quite narrow. With a 3/8” rod down the heel anchoring the neck that technically only leaves 3/16” of continuous grain on either side of the rod… it’s a bit hard to explain, but if my tenon was 3/8” wide and my rod down the heel is 3/8” wide, then my neck could very easily break away leaving the bolt and tenon behind. Does that make sense? Anyway, a wider tenon would actually be better - the wider you can make it within your heel the better.

Hi - thanks for the detailed reply - I really appreciate it - that does make perfect sense. I mocked one up out of the template I have and it was fine. I have to say though - you make it look easy and it definately isnt @@redtreecollectiveguitars

@@hereasafanofallsorts5164 You're welcome :) Haha, sorry! I suppose I've made a number of jigs this way now so it has become easier for me. -Zach

Thanks for your concern - we usually do wear masks in addition to our shop dust collection, but it’s not ideal for videos.

The jig is only for the neck set-back. The side-to-side (I think that’s what you’re referring to as the yaw?) is done by lining up the centre line on the neck with a centre line on the top. When I place the neck blank on the body I sight down the lines and adjust where necessary.

Thanks! Good idea for a video - I’ll add it to my list of topics to cover in future videos! :)

@@treehouseguitars that would be great. My next build will be exactly a bolt on acoustic the same way you did it in the video. :)

Awesome!! It’s certainly a great neck joint, in my opinion! :)

Thanks :) Yeah, I don’t think a bolt on neck joint makes much sense if it’s still partially glued on… The “coffin guitar” is a jig I built to simulate strings on a guitar with a floating bridge. Basically the body, without a neck, sits under the strings and I can find the strings to pitch and adjust break angle over the bridge and get a sense of the sound before a lot of the work is done on the rest of the guitar. It has come in pretty handy!

Sure, that’s another way to do it and would work just fine. In fact, that’s what I used to do for about the first 7 or 8 years of my career, bolted through the heel block and glued fingerboard extension. I just really like the serviceability of a fully bolt on neck joint as well as the stability of the frame in the upper bout when it’s done this way. Taking apart a glued fingerboard extension is not fun and it is pretty tricky not to damage the finish anywhere so it often requires several more hours of work for a technician if the neck needs to be removed. With all that being said, this is just one of many many ways to attach a neck on. It’s not necessarily better or worse, just different. :)

Yes! Great idea! In fact, you’ve given me an idea to start a playlist of “simple jigs in detail”. 😏

LOL, just watched this for the first time and I immediately thought, "well that jig is much easier than how I was setting neck angle, I'm going to make one". I assume that the bridge end is about 3mm taller than the nut and body joint locations.

You’re welcome Darren! Hope you find it useful!

Thanks! It’s my pleasure. :)

Thanks! Cool, that’ll be a fun project :) The jig I’m checking the neck angle with basically just has 3 protrusions, one at the bridge location, one at the neck joint and the other (which sticks out about 2mm extra) is at the nut. It helps me dial in the setback of my neck so that my neck projects to the right height at the saddle. Alignment side to side is eyeballed with a centre line on the neck and top. Does that answer your question?

@@zachlefebvre4825 Thanks Zach, all new to me as I've be using a more cumbersome approach with a straight edge and measuring gaps etc. Is there a source where I could find a plan on how to build your alignment/reference jig ?

⁠@@andrewdarnley4608- I don’t know of any plans, but I’ve made a few of these jigs by 1) jointing one edge of a thin board 2) gluing equal sized “nubs” where the nut, neck joint, and saddle go 3) adding a shim to the “nut nub” which is the thickness I want the setback to be.

Hello from Canada! Glad you liked the video! :)

Oops, I must have missed it in the video. Here it is: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ux9A3n6ae9M.html I've thought about starting a patreon page... maybe I should revisit the idea... 🤔

Hello!! 👋🏻 You’re welcome :) This guitar was my standard scale length, 64.5cm.

@@zachlefebvre4825 Thanks

@@msinger01- no problem at all! :)

Yeah you could do that for sure. I like aluminum for its low mass as well as the fact that if you accidentally hit it with a router bit it's not going to destroy anything.

Glad to hear it’s inspiring you to try new things!!

Thanks for the encouragement. It is great to know that the effort is appreciated.

Hi, unfortunately I had this one custom made, but you could do the same. As long as the width matches your mortise/tenon size then the rest should be custom tailored to your guitar dimensions (like how deep your bodies are).

Thanks! You’re welcome. :)

Yeah, makes sense! It’s glued on at 90 degrees then sanded down. The top radius would make it ever-so-slightly inconsistent in thickness, but not anything that would throw anything off.

@@treehouseguitars Nice thanks... whats your top radius?

@@LeddingtonGuitars - Well it’s actually sort of complicated. My rim is sanded flat then angled back slightly from the heel block to the waist (to get the fingerboard projecting a bit higher at the saddle). My bracing is designed so that once the guitar is strung up the radius is about 28’.

Hey Len! Yes I did design the jig for drilling all the holes, I had my cousin machine it for me. I could give you some more details of the jig although the measurements don’t matter a whole lot, in fact it may make more sense to adapt it to your design. If you have a wider heel than me you might want a wider tenon or if you body depths are quite a bit different the bolt spacing should be changed. In my case as long as the 3/8” aluminum rod goes down the centre of the heel parallel to the the tenon (which will also be perpendicular to the bolt holes), and the bolt holes are spaced as such so that the bolt heads don’t interfere with anything internally then it’s good. Another important strength consideration, I believe, is for the tenon to be a fair amount wider than the 3/8” rod, otherwise the rod would cause a pretty weak spot in the neck where the wood between the rod and the body could come apart from the rest of the neck. Hopefully all that made sense. If you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask for clarification! The jig for drilling the machine head holes was my design and I’d like to say it was my idea, but I can’t imagine I’m the first person to have done something like it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@@treehouseguitars Thanks for that Zack........I see you are in Ontario, another proud Canadian. I live in beautiful Victoria, B.C. I have been studying your jigs, and method, and I am fascinated by them. I already have most of the jigs, etc.... that I need to forge ahead, but I absolutely want to borrow some of your ideas. I am a new builder. I retired from a great career almost three years ago, and guitar building has become my passion, even though I am only on guitar number four at this time. I hope to dig in deep in the coming years, and produce wonderful sounding and playing instruments. Thank you for your inspiration.

@@len6408 - Aw thanks Len! Being told that I’ve inspired someone is a high compliment. If you have any questions at any point in time I love helping new builders out. And if it does interest you I teach courses from time to time where a few students build a guitar alongside of me and we delve into the nitty gritty of… everything basically. If you do want to be kept in the loop for those you can fill out the form on my website then I’ll have all your contact info. Alternatively I’m happy to just keep answering questions. :)

Very similar, yes, theirs is a brilliant neck joint design in my opinion. I’m sure they weren’t the first to come up with the idea. If you need shims to get the right amount of action then there are bigger issues - and these are all avoided with maintaining correct neck angle throughout this process.

With that being said, wedge-shaped shims are a good way to correct the neck angle if your entire fingerboard sits in a pocket on the top.

@@treehouseguitars in my opinion the shim system is a clever idea. Moreover the thickness increases the angle of minimum quantity. And the best thing is that in most cases you are not going to modify the neck anyway.

@@andros1961 - It’s definitely super user-friendly, which was an smart move on Taylor’s part. Any form of bolt on neck makes future modifications/repairs easy and inexpensive really. Theirs happens to be pretty foolproof which is great if they end up in the hands of guitar techs with little to no experience working on them.

Umm, I’m not sure what you mean. I brace my guitars so they will be arched fairly consistently AFTER the string tension is applied, so yes, but it’s more complicated than just arching the top in this case. If you simplify it by making your top an even radius then you can get your fingerboard projection aiming slightly higher. I’m assuming that’s why you were asking?

Unfortunately not, I’ve asked him a couple times. I agree, I think this design makes more sense. Are you able to find a local machinists? It’s not an overly complicated jig to make for a machinist.

Hey Troy :) This was one of my concerns the first time I did this joint, but I was glad to see that it was fairly easy to get the end of the block lined up perfectly with the UTB. If your top is pinned into mold you can accurately mark a line at each end of the UTB and use a straightedge to mark it on the block. Then sneak up on it with several router passes until the UTB snuggly slides down next to the block. One of the main reasons why end grain glue joints fail is because the glue quickly absorbs into the end grain leaving very little in the glue joint. I should have maybe mentioned this in the video, but I “prime” the end grain of the block extension with a thin layer of glue - let it soak in and dry, lightly sand then proceed to glue the parts together (that goes for any end grain joint). You might have noticed that I rout slightly into the UTB when routing the neck/body pocket. This basically makes the end-grain glue joint less important since the neck anchors into the UTB. I hope that answers your questions! -Zach

Perfect. Thx a lot for the reply… I have built 2 guitars at this point, but am trying to refine my processes to make the process more repeatable and enjoyable.

I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve never seen anyone else pin it to the mold but it seems like a good idea… so would you line it up with no braces and get the pin holes aligned so that once it is braced you already have the pins figured out? It seems like if you had the UTB already glued on, the fretboard support would not allow you to accurately mark the pins… have I deduced the order of operations correctly? Thanks so much for your generosity with the information! I don’t know how people learned things before RU-vid :)

@@troywoodyard-qb1qk - That’s right. The pin holes are drilled into the tops (relative to the centre line) as soon as it has been joined. That way I can pin it in place in the mold and trace the outline as well as mark all of my brace locations in relation to where the pins are. The pins are basically locators for where the top (and back) should be at every step of the process.

@@troywoodyard-qb1qk - my pleasure, by the way. I like helping budding luthiers speed up their learning curve. :)

Great!! Happy to help! :)

Haha, thanks, I’m glad you’re enjoying the videos! I don’t generally laminate my sides, although I think laminating two or three thin layers together would work well. I find adding too much mass to the sides affects the bass response and clarity in a way that I don’t particularly like (with my building style anyways). This guitar has a laminated back which was for a few reasons. Honduras Rosewood is so dense it sinks in water so I wanted to take up some of the back’s thickness with a light weight wood to keep it more active. Also the back is actually made of 6 pieces so a second layer helps to reinforce all those joints.

Hey Mark! I had a relative (machinist) make it for me. But I believe Elevate Lutherie makes one similar now. If you scroll through our past videos I did one talking about this specific jig. You may find it useful. :)

Hey Mark, yes I believe you’re right. It was made in 3 parts then bolted together.

Do you mean the soundport on the upper bout, bass side? It’s basically just a small port for sound to go towards the player. It’s reinforced on the inside, but the rest of the sides are single-ply, standard solid wood guitar sides.

At 4:45 in the video the sides don’t look single ply. I’ve never seen anything like that before. It looks really thick, but hollow.

I think what you might be looking at is the kerfing. Here is a video that Zach did on his treehouse account before we started this one. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tkXNLBQowGg.html - Eric

If you go to 4:45 there is something more going on. I see the kerfing, but that looks like a double wall on the sides. You can only see the kerfing from the top. If the sides were single ply, you’d see the sides of the kerfing, which you don’t.

@@thomastedder- Yeah, good observation. That particular guitar (and a few others I’ve made in the past) had structured sides. Meaning the kerfing basically goes the full width of the side. Quite a few guitar makers are using this method now, but I moved away from it because I felt it didn’t work so well in my guitars, particularly in how it affected bass response. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Hopefully that image didn’t make things confusing! If you have any questions let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. :)

Thanks Brian! :)

If your heel is deep enough to do that it would work well to do that, yeah. In my case I don’t have much more room past the rod so I can’t.

The extension block that’s glued to the underside of the fingerboard tongue is only 12mm thick, but the heel block itself ends up being around 32mm thick in the centre.

You're very welcome! :) -Zach

There are many ways to make a great guitar - this is one of them. I used to do a dovetail neck joint and got quite good and efficient at it, but it has its flaws. It does not support the upper bout of the guitar very well so the guitar’s geometry changes much more over time than with a neck joint like this. Also once the geometry changes, it is a time-intensive and expensive job to readjust the neck angle to correct the changes in geometry. I am certainly not against dovetail neck joints, but after using several neck joint methods, I much prefer this type of neck joint for many reasons - and I believe it is much more difficult to execute than a simple dovetail. 🤷🏻‍♂️

So @tribestribes2555 are you suggesting we should leave the neck to it's own devices because it's metal and not a string or tuner?

Clown, you should be legally obligated to finish your statement with a great big DUHU.