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What are thoughts about thin wood veneer layers in a neck laminate? I’m thinking about design to maybe match a thin color in purfling and binding. But I’m not sure if the veneer will be a good idea structurally, even if sandwiched in mahogany or next to another piece of wood. Or how it will work when shaping the neck, or as the neck ages and wears in with playing.

Thanks, Jon

Works great. This one is maple veneer with book matched black walnut. Not a problem structurally.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I’ve had no issues either, though I don’t do it very often…

I've used boxwood, Maple, Wenge and Gabon and Macassar ebony with no problems.
Any problems I've heard of seem to be about gluing it improperly.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Mahogany/maple/rosewood/maple/mahogany was classic for a long time. I’m not sure how a fiber-based color veneer would do structurally in that situation. I *think* it should be fine if you saturate it with a penetrating expoxy like West Systems.


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The main issues I've seen with that are on old Gibsons and others, where they used thick black-dyed walnut center laminates. The dyeing process causes the wood to deteriorate over time, and they fall apart. Modern dyes, and thinner veneers, should be fine.

I would expect fiber to work well with almost any wood glue if it's done right. The glue will penetrate nicely, and fiber is strong stuff.

I've used thin veneers in neck laminates for years in banjo making. Always worked fine. Regular yellow glue Vacuum bagged the backstrap.

Dave

Gonna tag on to this and ask about epoxy vs Tightbond or LMI in this application? I’ve used Resin Research (low VOC’s) building whitewater dories and West System some too. The laminates will contain dyed wood veneer and maybe a center strip of an oily wood such as rosewood. I understand opinions will vary here - I’m mostly concerned about saturating the veneer and getting a strong bond.

My apologies, I forgot to mention I did do so searches with key words, but the most recent on I found was 2015. I don’t recall seeing any of the current posters in this thread in the old ones. Thx again Jon

Seemed to work great for many Japanese makers in the 60's. Martin is doing it again. I'm talking about plywood.... literally stacks of veneers.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

They did it way back in the baroque time. This one is just white and black veneer, with HHG. Put on glue. Lay in place. I think I'll put something like Zpoxy to soak into everything, and make it tougher.

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Why be normal?

Titebond Original works fine. I’ve got my daily player here that was built in 1978 and it has no issues with neck laminations.

I've only been laminating necks using thin and thicker veneers since the late 90's and same as Barry.

I've been doing it for a long time. It works great. I use dyed black veneers.
I use tightbond original .



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Boy, I wasn't thinking LAMINATE necks with veneer. You can make a neck with any veneers, why would thickness matter? People even bent ribs that were VERTICAL layers in the baroque era. Glue the height. Cut in strips. Bend. Black/white/black/white sides; inside and out. Those guys were either marvels, or had way too much time on their hands.

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Why be normal?

Add me to the list of folks that have been doing this for many years with no problems, save one little peculiarity. Wood veneers and fiber veneers all work fine. For the most part any glue works fine as well. There is no issue with the fiber veneers. This material (generic name: vulcanized fiber) is made of heat and pressure treated wood fiber. It comes in a number of grades, but the stuff we use is the lowest commercial grade. It is also used as veneer backer for PSA veneers. Its mechanical properties are pretty much the same as for wood at these dimensions.

The one peculiarity for laminated necks I've found is that, if the shrinkage spec of the wood is greater than that of mahogany, and if the laminated pieces are well quartered, and if the finish is thin (FP, so-called oil finishes), then sometimes after a few years very slight ridges can be felt at the glue line(s). It took me a long time to figure out why this happens, but I finally got hold of a 50x field microscope when I had a guitar in my shop I could examine. The ridges were the glue at the glue lines, and they were exposed when the adjacent wood shrank back ever so slightly. When gluing broad surfaces with wood glue, most of the water from the glue ends up in the wood. This makes the wood expand locally. The water evaporates over a long period of time and the wood shrinks locally, but the actual glue is pretty rigid so it does not. These dimensional changes are minute, but they can sometimes be felt. The fix is to use epoxy. Again, there are so many conditions which must be met for this to happen that it may not be an issue in a lot of cases.

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R.M. Mottola
LiutaioMottola.com

Author of the books Building the Steel String Acoustic Guitar and Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms.

Some glues, such as Titebond, react with some finishes, and swell.

I just reviewed your neck section in your book and, surprise, it is well documented there. Now carefully studying the assembling body sections as my tops go on next. I did the back first since I wanted the chance to clean glue squeeze out, but see your points about the alternative. So many options…. Thanks much for your help, and your great book. Jon