Official Luthiers Forum!

Does anyone know of a site that fully explains how to join a cutaway side with the neck.?

Just make sure the neck block plus the width of the side matches up with the edge of the heal at the fingerboard. Then just glue side to the side of the neck block.

Thanks Brock,
Do you miter the edge of the side?

I'm Paul but no, I don't miter anything. You have the choice to bind the cutaway or not. If you choose not, I'd overlap the cutaway side so you won't see the end grain of the other side. Mitering would also fix this problem but I think it might be hard to get the miters spot on.Pwoolson38940.4721412037

I like to leave a reveal of sorts at the cutaway on the top, ala Larrivee. I like to see the mitre joint in the purfling, and then for an edge treatment on the sode joint, I inlay a piece of contrasting wood, usually whatever the binding wood is. the look is like this ...

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

That's a beautiful cutaway Tony! Heck, the whole guitar's beautiful! Nice work!

_________________
http://www.presnallguitars.com

just one word of caution.

On a cutaway and while using radii on both top and back, the cutaway portion of the side will need to get larger near the middle since it is deeper into the dome of back and top.

I've built one guitar with a cutaway so far. I decided to use a "compound" cutaway, where the side fits flush against the heel. I have a few photos of the process, if you're interested.

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Can't speak for Bob, but I'm interested.

Steve

_________________
From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Okay, here goes. This guitar was my fourth build, and looks a bit crude to me now. But at least the compound cutaway worked well.

I started out by sketching out the area of the heel block I wanted to remove, then removed it with bits, rasps and files. I transferred the resulting contour to a gluing caul (shown in the first pic before carving the caul to match). The contour carved into the heel (and the caul) tapers somewhat from front to back to match the inner curve of the cutaway.



The next pic shows the caul carved to shape. It took a bit of work before I had a good match.



Next, I took a piece of side offcut and cut it to fit the front edge of the heel block on the cutaway side, to account for the other side's thickness.



I bent the side on a pipe (no pictures of this, sorry), and bent the cutaway portion such that the top part of the side had a slightly narrower bend than the bottom part, to account for the taper of the neck heel. Didn't take much, really. The claro walnut I used was more than flexible enough to conform to the contour.

Final fitting of the neck heel to the side so it fit flush was done with rasps, files and sandpaper:



Next time I do this, I'm gonna try installing binding/purfling on the edge of the side between the heel and the body.

Best,

MichaelMichael McBroom38940.6122569444

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Me too! I'd like to see those photos Michael.TIA
1 second too slow.. DaveAndy38940.6118865741

_________________
Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Sorry Paul
Thank you all again for being spot on.

Thanks for sharing this Michael!