New Neck for an Old Friend

This is a tale about choosing whom you let work on your favorite guitars…..The victim here was a 63 Gibson 335 reissue. The owner wanted the neck shaved, a common mod back in the day but not seen so much today with all the thin shredy necks on the market. The man chosen for the job was not up to the task and blew through the back of the neck exposing the truss rod……

The plan is to save the guitars identity and provide the slim, oil finished neck the owner wants. So we begin with some disassembly and salvage. First up I need to remove the fret board so I use it on the new neck. I do this with a heat gun and some small spatulas. I use heat shields that are made out of heavy cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil to protect the finish on the top of the guitar. I prefer to start at the body and work my way up the neck. When heating the FB do not concentrate in one spot or you will burn the board. I heat the first 6 inches or so slowly and evenly until I can get my spatula under it. From there I just slowly and carefully work my way up the neck until the board is free. Beware the plastic dowels that Gibson uses to index the FB to the neck. It takes a little care and effort but I just slice through them…..

Once the FB is off I can remove the neck. Since I cannot save the neck there is no reason to waste time steaming apart the joint. Here comes the saw! I carefully cut the neck off with a back saw taking care to not actually hit the metal truss rod with my saw. That leaves me a few inches of truss rod to dig out of the portion of the neck still in the body. A chisel makes quick work of that and the neck is free.

 

I remove the bulk of the rest of the neck from the body with the drill press and finish cleaning it up with a chisel.

I choose an 8/4 piece of Mahogany from my rack and rough out a blank. I also cut the headstock off the old neck. I want to preserve as much of the head as possible including the face and the serial number. But yet I need this to be strong enough to hold string tension…..

I mount a straight cut bit in my drill press and waste out most of the back of the headstock between the wings and across at the D & G tuner holes. This is then carefully squared up and all the mahogany removed to the back of the face veneer with varios chisels.

I also drill two hole up into the end grain and after the neck shaft is carefully fitted I transfer those to the new work and install two small mahogany dowels to reinforce the end grain joint. No sense putting all the stress on a .060” Holly veneer when we do not need to……I slot the new neck and install the truss rod that I removed under a maple cap. This is done to a non standard depth to provide proper function in a thinner than normal neck. Then The headstock can be clamped and glued to the rough blank.

Now that I have the head reestablished I can turn my attention to the tennon that will fit into the body. This is fairly straight forward…lay out the tennon and cut it into the neck.

Now I can glue the fret board back on. I simply use a binding rope to clamp it on. I use the nut as a spacer to get it positioned just right as I do not bother with the dowels that Gibson used. As you can see this method provides great clamping force over the entirety of the radiused FB. The neck blank is still rough and a bit oversized, it will get carved next.

The carving is a two step process. First I bring the neck to rough shape but still fairly oversized with a large rasp. The back of the headstock is planed off flush and the transition between neck and head is marked out rough by eye. The same is done at the heel. These areas are then carved to shape with chisels rasps and files of various shapes.

This is a dimension sensitive project. I have been given exact thickness specs for this neck by the client. Remember this all started with wanting a more slender neck…… So I first work the neck down in thickness with finer tools until I am about .025” thicker than final required dimensions. This leaves me just enough to sand and prep for finish. I then carve the desired profile at the area of the 1st fret and again at the 12th. Once again maintaining a slightly over size to account for sanding. These areas are now marked with chalk as a guide because they are now forbidden to touch, they are at final dimensions and going any thinner may lead to the truss rod breaking through again! All the remaining areas are carefully carved and shaped to be straight and true between these areas

Another specification for this is a natural feeling neck……I do mine very old school. A three step process of my own special blend of oils, spirits and secret ingredients. This means however that I cannot match the bright cherry sprayed on lacquer so the neck will look a bit darker than original. This also posed an issue on the back of the headstock. Serial numbers were stamped in ink on these, so refinishing the entire back of the head would obliterate the guitars identity. So the finishes were blended there the best as they can…. Gluing in the neck and setting up the guitar are fairly staright forward tasks accomplished in the usual ways.

Hope you enjoyed following this project with me. Brian M Howard, Luthier