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Hey guys -

What would you consider the largest acceptable headstock angle?

Finding I'm needing to work around my "hobbyist" level of skills :).  Was targeting 15 degrees.  Now based on the results I'm looking at something larger.  Alex Wills' book describes the downside of a larger angle being that it starts to look like a lute.  I was thinking there are probably other reasons, like increase string breakage, impact on tone, etc...  Thanks for the help - BillM

Whats wrong with 15 degrees?

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Was targeting 15 degrees.  :)  Didn't end up with 15.

The cut could have been better, leveled it out, looks like I now have 21.5 degrees.

im not sure how much variance from 15 degrees is acceptable, but do you have enough wood left to change the angle back to 15 degrees?

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sweat the small stuff.

Oh sure, here's my plan - glue it up, then remove wood to correct the angle, essentially moving the nut position forward.  The alternative, correcting the angle on the joint and then gluing, I think will leave me with kind of a stubby headstock.

Anyway, no problem, it's workable - it just left me asking myself the question - why 15 degrees?

Based on my reading, if the angle is too much less than
around 15 degrees, the string break angle over the
nut is insufficient.

If the angle is too great, the gluing surfaces of the
scarf joint become too small and the joint too
weak. Not to mention the lute issue you brought up...

Eric

Eric Frank Ford advises us that the ideal break angle for the nut is 7.5 degrees with a 15 degree headstock angle.  Regardless of what your headstock angle is so long as it is not way out there you can still achieve that 7.5 break angle on the nut.

I hope this helps.

It does!

Thanks for the help guys - Yeah, I can make this work.

About to glue up... this scarf joint clamp-up is a tricky thing, isn't it?

[QUOTE=billm]  Alex Wills' book describes the downside of a larger angle being that it starts to look like a lute.  [/QUOTE]

I object to that!

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

You're increasing friction over the nut and making tuning much more difficult. With Colin's gut or nylon strings...well, lutenists spent half their day tuning anyway...and the other half a day repairing their instruments. There's an incredible 17th or maybe 16th century treatise on caring for lutes.   You're advised to sleep with it to keep it nice and warm...but they have these chastity belt thingies! Colin, what's that old monograph?   

Doesn't Kinkeade's neck come out less than 15 with the "stack" headstock method he uses? Maybe not, but I was thinking after reading his book back in the day that his headstock angle looked shallow compared to others.

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

Hey Rick - thank you, that makes sense - that's the kind of thing I was wondering.

In Kinkead's book, he's going after 10 degrees, yeah.

You need to look at how you came out off by a factor of about 40% on your headstock angle before going any further. My suggestion is to figure out the right way to join the headstock (you apparently are doing a scarfed headstock), then saw off this one and start over.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I made a dedicated table saw sled to cut the neck shaft to my preferred peghead angle of 14 degrees. I rough machine shape the neck blanks before I cut the scarf, and I then I glue an already mostly shaped peghead which has the matching angle cut for the top surface (fingerboard gluing surface).   The truss rod slot in the neck shaft meets up with a slot in the peghead, and I put a UHMW plastic spline in for alignment and then pop it out when the glue is set.

All this will change when we start CNC'ing all our necks, but it has proven to be an incredibly fast way to make necks with "conventional" tooling...that being my trusty ancient and large Ekstrom Carlson pin router.

I should probably document our whole system of neck making before it's in the dustbin of history.   I've made a couple of thousand necks this way, and short of a CNC machine, I think it's one of the fastest ways to make high quality necks that I know of.

Check this machine out:

http://www.dynamitetoolco.com/W1736_Bench_Overarm_Router_p/w oo-w1736.htm

I used to have one...before I got the monster, and this thing with a 3 1/2 HP Bosch router in it will really get the job done.   There are things that aren't quite as convenient about it that you get with bigger machines, but for the dough, it's a great machine.

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper]You need to look at how you came out off by a factor of about 40% on your headstock angle before going any further. My suggestion is to figure out the right way to join the headstock (you apparently are doing a scarfed headstock), then saw off this one and start over.[/QUOTE]

Oh, I know how I did it.

Made the cut on my cheap 9" bandsaw, and the cut came out kind of parabolic.  So I clamped this pieces together, leveled it out, but after removing the neccessary amount of material it messed up the angle.  Yeah, I'm pretty clear about what happened.  And knew it before I glued it up, having worked out a way to - well - work it out.

So - I've been advised that a 14" bandsaw is probaby what's needed for this kind of job - plus I'm guessing I need a thicker blade, and probably to tighten it up a bit.  In short, some problems to my approach here.  Hey, I'm learning, and I'm OK with making dumb mistakes as long as I gain experience from it.

Anyway, worked it today down to 17.8 degrees.  I'm going with it.

Frankly, you'd be better off learning to do this by hand than by relying on a band saw that you can't control. As one who is tooled up to the hilt, I still say that beginning luthiers should learn to use hand saws, planes, and chisels properly before being turned loose on power tools...which just make it easier to make mistakes. If you can't measure, mark, and cut things reasonably accurately by hand, you maybe shouldn't be using power tools unless they're good ones and you're using jigs and fixtures to guide your cuts.

You'd be amazed at how fast and good cuts can be with a nice Japanese pull saw and a bow saw for curves. You'll also get really familiar with the feel of wood and how grain works.   Then rough your neck with a draw knife and a spoke shave before you move over to a Nicholson #50 rasp if you really want to understand wood.

If I ever teach a long course on instrument making, I'm going to teach real hand making as a pre-requisite to allowing students to use power tools.

[QUOTE=Rick Turner]
I should probably document our whole system of neck making before it's in the dustbin of history. [/QUOTE]

Rick, I think you should document it here! I'd love to see the process.

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

You know Rick - I think I agree with you.  

The band saw is reasonably new, and I regret getting the dang thing - its a "get what you pay for" scenario.

I did my prior projects with hand tools and did them reasonably well, I think I'll take your advice and stick with it.

 

When I was in furniture school the entire first semester was with hand tools
only.
The first assignment was to flatten, thickness and square all edges and ends
of a 8" x 12" x 2" board by hand. It took some people weeks to finish, after
going through several pieces of wood.
Our second assignment was to design and build a bench using hand tools
only. To this day it's still one of my favorite pieces I've ever built.


-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

There's lots of satisfaction to be had from working with hand tools, and it doesn't have to be much slower than using power tools, as long as everything's good and sharp. It's also a lot quieter.

This said, since I've proven to myself I can build a guitar using hand tools, I feel no compunction letting the bandsaw, thickness sander and powered sander do some of the heavy lifting. I've only got a few hours per week to spend building, so anything that makes things more efficient is a good thing. I do feel quite strongly that working blanks by hand did give me greater insight into and a feel for accuracy and the work involved that power tools lack. That's not stopping me from making my neck-blank-o-matic routing fixture, though ;)

if you have a table sw just make a jig for holding the neck stock and cut the scarf on the table saw. simple to build, simple to use, and with a good blade ready to glue right off the saw. as close to fool proof as you can get.

pete lici came up with the one i use. it can be seen on kathy matsushita's site.

Using a Japanese saw for cutting the scarf joint is a good idea. The one I have is so sharp and fast, it only takes about a minute to make the cut. And because it cuts when you pull, its easy to cut a nice straight line.

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53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/