Dovetail adjustments

[rstbkt]

The thought of doing a dovetail joint has given me the willies just thinking about it. So i took control and decided to at least give a dovetail a little more thought instead of just ignoring it. I have a neck from a broken guitar that already had a dovetail cut on it and I used some scrap wood to simulate the guitar body and cut the pocket with my templates. Now i know that there will not be a perfect fit due largely in part that the already cut part on the broken guitar neck was not cut with the same set of templates. I could build up some scrap to simulate a neck and cut it with the template i have, but I thought what better a way to practice getting the neck set right than to take two different cuts and work on them to get a good tight fit. Besides it was a late night and I didn't want to build yet another jig

So now everything is cut and ready to trim and shim. then I realized that I don't know what to trim to make what work. I can see that adding shims can either raise the neck up a little if placed in the pocket just right on both sides. and also pull the neck deeper into the pocket . That will be experimented with a great deal. But what is done when the neck is tilted off on one side or another. What technique is used to pull or push the centerline of the neck back to the centerline of the body. If the joint is tight I think you would have to trim one side or the other to align the centerline but what side to trim moves it in the right direction. if the joint is lose I think you would correct it with shimming one side or the other. Then again I might thave to trim one side and shim the other. As my test dovetail is now it is a tight fit. It would seem to be a perfect fit but the neck centerline points to the left. If I could fix this with a shim I would put it on the left side, correct? and If I trimmed I would trim the right side. It seems to me that you shim on the side it points to and trim on the side you need it to move. Is this right. I don't want to goof the neck up and use up all my practice making it worse and chasing my tail.Thanks
Jim

[B. Howard]

When I set up and do mine, I set up my cuts so my neck sits about .030 higher than what I want finished. I then push, pull or otherwise shift the neck so it aligns for centerline and gives the pitch I need for my bridge and simply floss the shoulders that bear against the outside of the rims until I get a nice fit at the proper height. I only shim if I did not allow enough "drop" in my initial fit to allow all the movement needed. Shiming one side only works if the entire neck is off center but parallel to the body center, otherwise you change the point where the centerlines meet at the joint by however thick your shim is.

[rstbkt]

do you cut the pocket so the end of the neck is touching the bottom of the pocket?

[B. Howard]

No, I always make sure there is space at the end of the neck. This space will be necessary when the neck needs re set. I will often trim the end of the neck after fitting the joint to obtain clearance for a stream needle. You also need the space so the neck can move forward as it moves down while you fit the shoulders.

[tippie53]

one more point
anywhere on the neck joint where there is a inside outside corner , be sure to clear the male part of that area. Nothing is more frustrating that having the joint held off and not knowing it.