During lockdown I decided to revisit my second build from about 4 years ago - a dreadnaught built using the Cumpiano book. Long story short, the neck needed a reset but I struggled immensely with this for a number of reasons. Of course inexperience, but also poor craftsmanship from my initial figment of the neck. The tenon was sloppy which made it hard to get a reliable read on where material needed to be taken off. Now, the obvious thing would be to veneer the tenon (it’s a bolt on btw) but this wouldn’t solve the other issue I had; in the book the heel is designed to be very narrow with only about 1/8” (from memory) of cheek either side of the tenon. Being a tapered profile, the more material you remove during the reset process the narrower the cheeks get. After several failed attempts (I am by my own admission an amateur practicing and failing on my own instrument as I learn my trade...) the heel just became too narrow to work with. So I decided to lop it off and start again...
I made a new stacked mahogany heel and have been fitting it up before I glue it to the neck. The joint and angle is now where it needs to be, so I plan to bolt the heel in place then work out where the neck needs to point to be central to the bridge. Will probably use some guide tacks during this process to lock it in place when gluing and will inevitably have to do some fine tuning after this.
It’s been a big operation and a massive learning curve but I’ve enjoyed it. The guitar sounds great which is why I’m bothering in the first place!
Note: in the first photo the heel is not in position - it will be 3/4 lower down as the rest of the neck will sit on top of it.
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