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This page is offered as an outline of the steps I take to assemble an archtop guitar from laminated parts. Since I will
not cover every inch of every step (there is a lot of common knowledge out there, available from friends and books), I
suggest that you not rely on this essay exclusively as your construction manual, but combine it with:
*Making An Archtop Guitar by Benedetto (the book that got most of us hooked)
*Making A Laminated HollowBody Guitar by English (useful for ideas on installing multiple pickups)
*Guitarmaking by Cumpiano and Natelson (along with online upgrades by Cumpiano, this is the "bible" of flattop guitar
building, if such can be said to exist)
*The Luthier's Handbook by Siminoff (the guitar as a system for tone production, with lots of archtop information)
In addition there is a huge amount of information being passed around the internet, much of it useful; it is in your
best interest to mine this rich ore. How will you tell the nuggets from the fool's gold? Beware the guy who speaks in absolutes
(of course I say this absolutely) and keep an open mind - there are almost always alternate approaches to any given operation,
and eventually you will discover one that suits you.
NOW, You can jump to #46 for the description of how I drill the headblock and heel
bolt holes while keeping them in alignment.
Stock for the neck blank should begin by being surfaced and then planed to a thickness of about 1", and jointed
and ripped to 2 3/4". Let it sit around in your shop for awhile, and check to make sure that it hasn't moved; re-joint it
if it does. I usually rip the neck blank to 2 1/2" wide for the actual construction - this is far wider than your neck's finished
width, but you're going to carve it down to its finished size anyway.
You can try to use the pricey blanks available from the luthierie suppliers to produce your neck, but beware: the 24"
ones are too short for more than the shaft and peghead, which means you might want to invest in two blanks, so you'll
be able to cover the heel stack, the extension, and the peghead ears, with material to spare. There are longer blanks available,
to be sure, but you'll want to do some math, and you may want to check with other woodworkers and lumber suppliers, to
see what might be available locally. And, if this is your first, or even second or...I suggest a practice piece.
Get some pine, or poplar, or whatever is cheapest in your neighborhood, and run through the process. Don't risk ruining
that spectacular neck blank.
Your Allen wrench size will depend on the socket head cap screw you pick. The cap screws in the pic are button head,
but socket head will work as well. You should use a lockwasher with your choice.
Use the shortest socket head set screws you can find, 1/4" long or less, and drive them tightly against the stub of allen
wrench. Now you will have to grind off the protruding tops of the SHSS, in order to fit your wrench in through the jack hole,
which is about to become your only neck bolt access. If you've used a really short set screw, grinding them flush with
the shaft of the wrench should still leave enough socket to allow you to remove and tighten them. A great help for bolting
and unbolting the neck is an inspection light, a diode or xenon bulb, on a flexible neck, that will reach right in through
an f-hole and illuminate a bolt socket.
When it comes to adjusting the string height, the archtop builder is blessed.
First, the neck angle can be changed with a little chisel and sandpaper work. You are not likely to move things so much
that the neck bolts bind in the anchors, because we're talking about fractions of a degree.
Then there is the archtop bridge, which is traditionally adjustable.
The tailpiece is also adjustable; it can be made to hug the top, and it can be raised.
I won't even mention the possibility of pulling the frets and tapering or even replacing the fingerboard with a thicker
one - this is extreme stuff, but in the spirit of knowing that extreme fixes are possible, everyone should understand that
there is almost no disaster too terrible to recover from.
String up your archtop while it is still in the white, before you do the final sanding.
No, I don't consider this to be a poor joint, by any means. Wooden-boat builders regularly lengthen planking with scarf
joints, where the butt ends of the planks are tapered to 12-in-1 slopes and glued together, end to end, with epoxy. Of course,
this kind of joint is regularly reinforced, especially if it is below the waterline. Since we won't try to sail our git to
Honolulu, we won't add fiberglas to the joint.
The joint I've described is about a 14-in-1 slope, which is even flatter, and doesn't qualify as a butt joint, which
involves lots more end grain.
Finally, I have built these joints and tested them to destruction. They fail with all the wood being ripped off
the heel stack, just as you would expect a perfectly parallel joint to fail - there is no failure in the glue line.
The only objection to doing the heel joint this way is aesthetic - if you're the guy who admires a perfectly parallel-stacked
heel, then...all I can say is that, the tapered piece is not obtrusive, to my eye, and depending on the figure and color of
the neck wood, the joints may disappear.
If you prefer, glue up the stack with the neck attached, and then cut the angle (remember the protractor) on the flush
face, where it meets the body. Set up the neck in your drillpress vise, with the neck shaft overhanging the drillpress table,
and the angled face as parallel to the table as you can get it, and then drill the anchor holes.
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