Working on the neck joint

I spent a few hours this weekend working on the neck joint for #4. First I routed the tenon. I use a jig  based on a design by Woolson (I wrote about it here a while ago).

The next step was routing the mortise in the body.  One thing to note, I drilled the bolt holes before I started routing because its easier to mark the location and see what I’m doing on the flat side of the guitar rather than inside a trench.

 

I use the mortise and tenon router templates from Stew-Mac with a pattern cutting bit with the bearing at the bottom. The tenon template is a tiny bit smaller than the mortise, meaning the fit will be sloppy. In order to make fit better, I glue some shims to the tenon.

On a related note, somebody posted the results of a strength test where they stressed a mortise and tenon bolt-on joint to see where it would fail. If I recall correctly (can’t seem to find the post) it would break in the area of the barrel-nut holes. They also showed that laminating the sides of the tenon gave it a lot more strength.

So, here is what I came up with. Laminated with veneer for both strength and a tight fit.