Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been working on this neck re-set for a while now, I finally got the fit nice and tight and shimmed properly but now my center-line is off.

I still need to take a little material off the neck because the neck is still a little underset, so I think I still have time to address the messed up center line. Two questions, to address this do I simply take material off the treble side of the cheeks to swing the neck back that way? And is there a calculation that will tell me how much to take off or is it just a little bit at a time until its back to the right place?

If you are looking down the centerline from the endpin to headstock, sand the cheek on the side it is off center to allow it to swing back the other way. As little under set as that looks you are right about getting it on center and set to the right height.

_________________
"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

As with any joinery just remember that you can always remove more material but it's way harder to put it back on. Remove a few bits at a time until you get it right, and yes you are right you remove wood from the cheeks slowly until you get the alignment right. You might try undercutting the cheeks slightly so that you don't have as much wood to work away and thus you can be a little more precise.

Lay a straightedge on each sides of the neck and mark where they strike the bridge. Take material off the check until the marks are equi-distant from the outside pin holes. Shim the joint to tighten it up.

I've never used any calculations for any part of neck resetting. There probably is a way to do it but the angle would be so small it's just not practical to measure and cut it. As DanKirkland said, just go easy till you get it right. If you have a nice tight fit with the shims then fit it up and do your center line measurements, as well as the neck set measurements. Then just shave a bit off. I personally use a chisel because I find that sanding sticks tend to round things off on the edges. I think most people think that you have to remove a lot of wood to set the angle right. It's really quite the opposite, so go slow.

FWIW I just use a pieces of string and stretch it from the low and high E-String at the nut to the bridge pin hole. When they look even on both edges of the fretboard I'm done.

I do the same, I recall I had a client once that was OBSESSED with the amount of projection that the neck had. The conversation went along the lines of.

Client: Now when you reset this neck, I've measured it all out exactly, I only need another 2/64 of projection added over the body
Me: Ok, why that number?
Client: Because that's what it needs
Me: Is it hard to play?
Client: No, I like the way it plays, the projection just isn't right

You can fill in the rest. I decided to turn the job down in the end.

Does anyone have a good concise reset tutorial?

_________________
Pat

The Stew Mac DVD with Dan Erlewine and Brian Galloup is great. I've googled youtube videos of John Hall teaching it which were also very good. I used the resources on Frets.com and bryankimsey.com, and found their step by step pictorials to be really helpful for the way I learn. Not to mention all the responses on here to answer the questions either not covered or I missed in the above resources.

Each one of those tutorials I mentioned could be considered a concise neck reset tutorial but I've found they each approach it slightly differently and watching each of them tackle the same problem differently has given me a more holistic understanding of what it is I'm trying to achieve. In the end I probably appropriated bits from each of them.

It remains to be seen if I win in the end.