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I have been carving a mahogany neck for a 12 fret steel string and am trying to decide just how much wood to take out of the neck shaft/heel joint. It is a straight tenon, bolted on neck joint. Picture below. My concern is just how much I can remove material to improve playability in that area without weakening the joint. It is a cutaway so the heel is left at full width.

I have kept the neck shaft straight up to around the 9th fret then it rises slightly to the transition. I know that you repair people come across splits in the heel along the cross grain but I wonder if this is related to taking too much timber from around this joint?

Would successful SS builders care to show their typical heel profiles to indicate what is sensible...?

Dave

I don't have a useful photo to post but if it helps, I start the transition from the neck to the heel on a 12-fret neck half way between the 9th and 10th frets and the vertical face of the heel is 3/4" thick along the vertical centerline from the heel cap to the transition curve into the neck. The curve of the transition itself is circular in shape with a radius of right about 1".

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Here's my last guitar and only 12 string, 23 mm at 1st fret, tapers to 25 mm at 9/10th, about 1 mm more than my 6 strings.
End cap is about 25 mm long, transition is 1" radius.
Wouldn't worry about playability too much, unless you know its going to be played at the dusty end.

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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.

That looks pretty good...

Thanks Colin and Jay that is useful info. It’s interesting that you both know and use the same radius for the transition.

I am trying to pull all the threads together on this build rather than just going on feel. Colin I am aiming this one very specifically at the finger style player so the feel at the dusty end does actually matter a bit. Hence also a fairly wide neck - 47 or so mm at the nut.

Thanks Dave

I use a 2" robosander for the transition, and 48 mm for the nut width. That was as a picker, or rather dual purpose, but no cutaway and 14 fret

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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.

Your heel is structurally fine but I personally like to have a beefier tenon when using a slim profile heel. This is actually an area many new builders get wrong - they overbuild the heel so much that and the guitar suffers for it aesthetically.