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The bulk of the neck is done, only a couple things left. So this post is about the bolting-in to the body. And yes, we will actually be bolting it, or at least machine screwing to the body. Traditionally, which typically means “how Fender does it”, the neck fits tightly into a matching pocket cut into the body and is held in place with three or four screws. For example, here is the back of my Strat showing how it all holds together, and beside it is the neck, screws and screw plate from my Telecaster, which is somewhat disassembled right now.
For some reason, this is called a bolt on neck. I suppose ‘screwed on neck’ doesn’t have quite the cachet… Well, cachet or not, I’m going for true bolt on, or as close as I can get to it. We can’t drill right through the neck and use actual bolts, but some luthiers will use machine screws and embed brass or steel inserts into the neck for a stronger grip to the body, and I want to give this a try. So here’s the mounting plate but, instead of wood screws, the machine screws and brass inserts picked up from the local Lowe’s hardware…
I align the neck plate to the guitar body’s center line, make the hole locations and drill pilot holes in the body…
Holes now located, I clamp the neck into place in the neck pocket and, using the pilot holes to guide the drill, extend the pilot holes down into the neck! The green tape on the drill bit hopefully obviously there to stop me from drilling through the neck completely. In which case I might actually have to build a true bolt on neck…
All ends well, though, and I can then clamp the neck to the trusty old radiusing block (that thing just keeps on coming in handy!). I do this carefully to make sure the neck is precisely perpendicular to my drill press table, and then drill out the pilot holes to a size suitable for the brass inserts.
The inserts themselves have to be screwed into these holes, and maple being a pretty hard wood, I would have preferred to tap out the holes to match the brass insert thread, but for the life of me I could not find a tap to match the insert. So, I go with lube instead, waxing up the inserts to ease them into the maple neck. Yo can use a big flathead screwdriver to drive the inserts into the wood, but for better control I cut a hex-head machine screw to a short length so I could use a hex wrench…
My high falutin’ Bessey clamp (you can never have enough clamps…) holds the neck stable and in she goes!
That’s one of four, and the rest go in just as successfully. I, with some trepidation, try tightening the neck down, half expecting the brass inserts to tear out of the neck, or the neck to snap, but all is ridiculously tight and solid, and it is another step closer to being a real guitar!
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