LP Jr Neck Fitting Question

[LC100]

Here's an early rough sketch of the dedicated angle jig: clicky clicky. This is for one of my designs but the premise would work on any guitar. Frankly, if your bread and butter is making LP clones only, then I don't know why you wouldn't have a dedicated jig instead of some hinged box. Setup with indexing of some sort and BAM! Angle is set and you can mill away 'til the cows come home. The angled sled the body sits on is removable from the box (though not shown) for doing different angles such as the pickup plane.

 

[Fletch]

The jigs in this thread are pretty cool, but I have to wonder if they are really necessary for creating a JR. style neck joint. I've been getting ready to build a Junior myself based on my real 56 LPJR, and have been putting together in my head how to do it, then I saw this thread.

If you were to switch the order of how things were done, you wouldn't need to make anything like this. Why don't you just make the neck, then clamp the neck where you want it on a fresh, uncut body blank, trace it, and make the neck pocket FIRST. Then fit the neck in the pocket, and strike lines out across the body from the neck to develop the centerline. Then make the rest of your routes (pickup, control cavity, etc) based on that centerline. Then when that's all done, place the body template over top of the blank, find the proper location, center it and trace, then cut and trim. Then do the roundover last for a complete guitar body.

I know the temptation when building a guitar is to start with the fun stuff first... so you trace a template onto a body blank, and cut it out and trim it. Then you make a centerline and do pickup routes, etc... But I think it would be easier if the guitar should be built from the center out, the center being the neck joint...

Just my .02 for what it's worth...


fletch

 

[SG Lou]

The jigs in this thread are pretty cool, but I have to wonder if they are really necessary for creating a JR. style neck joint. I've been getting ready to build a Junior myself based on my real 56 LPJR, and have been putting together in my head how to do it, then I saw this thread.

If you were to switch the order of how things were done, you wouldn't need to make anything like this. Why don't you just make the neck, then clamp the neck where you want it on a fresh, uncut body blank, trace it, and make the neck pocket FIRST. Then fit the neck in the pocket, and strike lines out across the body from the neck to develop the centerline. Then make the rest of your routes (pickup, control cavity, etc) based on that centerline. Then when that's all done, place the body template over top of the blank, find the proper location, center it and trace, then cut and trim. Then do the roundover last for a complete guitar body.

I know the temptation when building a guitar is to start with the fun stuff first... so you trace a template onto a body blank, and cut it out and trim it. Then you make a centerline and do pickup routes, etc... But I think it would be easier if the guitar should be built from the center out, the center being the neck joint...

Just my .02 for what it's worth...


fletch

Makes a whole lot of sense to me Fletch, when it comes to something as straight forward as a LP Jr.

 

[Rhubarb Red]

Just about to start routing the neck pocket and shaping the neck on my JR Build. I've decided to put the angle on the tenon itself and have the pocket parallel to the top.

When I come to rough cutting out my neck and trimming the tenon to fit the neck pocket, Obviously I need to create the correct neck angle, but also the allignment following the center line and making sure that there is no twist in the joint, right?

What are the steps you guys usually do this in? Do people route the neck pocket then trim the tenon to fit, working as you go.. measuring the neck angle, "side to side" allignment and making sure there's no twist?

Here's a thread on which I posted details and pics of how I did a single cut Junior's neck joint. Might not be how they did it in Kalamazoo back in the day, but it worked for me.

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/lut...-jr-single-cutaway-plans-neck-dimensions.html

 

[LC100]

I just have to bump this again after finding this article. In the first row of pictures there is a neck mortise jig that appears to be made for flat neck guitars. This is very similar to Bruce's jig and could probably be shimmed enough for jr's. There's some other cool stuff in there as well.

 

[LtDave32]

The jigs in this thread are pretty cool, but I have to wonder if they are really necessary for creating a JR. style neck joint. I've been getting ready to build a Junior myself based on my real 56 LPJR, and have been putting together in my head how to do it, then I saw this thread.

If you were to switch the order of how things were done, you wouldn't need to make anything like this. Why don't you just make the neck, then clamp the neck where you want it on a fresh, uncut body blank, trace it, and make the neck pocket FIRST. Then fit the neck in the pocket, and strike lines out across the body from the neck to develop the centerline. Then make the rest of your routes (pickup, control cavity, etc) based on that centerline. Then when that's all done, place the body template over top of the blank, find the proper location, center it and trace, then cut and trim. Then do the roundover last for a complete guitar body.

I know the temptation when building a guitar is to start with the fun stuff first... so you trace a template onto a body blank, and cut it out and trim it. Then you make a centerline and do pickup routes, etc... But I think it would be easier if the guitar should be built from the center out, the center being the neck joint...

Just my .02 for what it's worth...


fletch

When I first started building, I was lucky enough to have the advice over the phone of two pros with 40 years in the business who both worked for major guitar MFG's. They both had a strong bit of advice for me when laying things out..

.."Work from centerlines".

 

[Mandoace1923]

I've often build Jrs as your suggesting.

as for the neck pocket I use a rather cool jig that uses the finished neck as the guide for routing.

Its rather complicated to discuss here. but if you want I'll post a photo of it.

as far as "twist" goes. when building any guitar neck, your fingerboard glueing surface is always your reference. so use that to make the back of the neck ( and tenion) parallel to the fingerboard surface, then you can use a "try square" to make the sides "square" to the top and back.
it is possible to have the bottom and sides perfectly square and the fingerboard surface be a little out of sqaure and the guitar still work just fine.. but you will need to note which direction its off.
you may find you need to sand your fingerboard radius in a way that compensates for that tiny amount.
but, if you find that your more than a half a degree out of square once you get to final size.... then I recommend starting over with a new neck.

I use a series of "sleds" that work with my Drill press and safty planer to remove material from the back of the neck and tenion that keeps these surfaces within .020 of square of the fingerboard surface.
these sleds have the tenion angle and the neck thickness taper, already built in so that they duplicate these angles into the neck stock. they also reference fom the fingerboard surface.

such great information here. I used to compound dovetail neckfit mandolins at Gibson (the 1st to do so since 1969) I am here on my first LP build because I have no experience with LP's. one thing that you didn't touch on here is the plane of the headstock if you change the fingerboard surface angle you are changing the plane of the headstock.