Thoughts on fitting the dovetail - kit
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 2:02 pm
I post a lot but thought a post on my 1st time dovetail fitting experience would be worth it.
Well, this was by far the hardest part of putting together my Blues Creek Guitars kit so far. John's video's are the only source I found anywhere that gives a new person a good sense of what needs to happen to change the angles and get a good fit. So reminder to anyone needing to fit a dovetail: Google: youtube blues creek dovetail. And thank you John Hall for posting those! They are getting old but still quite useful!
Couple of thoughts:
I should have done a better fit without the fretboard glued on. I thought close was good but I got it set to within a couple of millimeters then glued on the fretboard but now have trouble getting the fretboard totally flush and seated leaving a little gap a the intersection. The angle of of the top doesn't seem to quite match the plane of the neck. John seems to cover this in his addendum video with all the sanding the neck to be flush with the top. I blew that part but it's close and straight. Think I can do better next time but I think I'd have have to remove my fretboard from the neck to do better on this one. It does seat a little better under clamping pressure but the picture shows the challenge.
Ensure the wings stay parallel to the body when sanding for elevation change. Any slight angle will cause a gap and mine was all over the place.
I actually bottomed out ( dovetail hit back wall of slot ) which means I probably sanded way too much from the wings trying to make them flush. Making the slot a little deeper was easy and fixed that problem.
I found that my favorite shim material is spruce scraps from the top with grain running lengthwise. The soft wood is super easy to shape. In gaining experience I sanded my shims to nothing and put new ones on at least 3 times. The original joint as shipped didn't need shims so perhaps with skill, one could just sand, fit, and go.
My dry fit is very tight and my straight edge off the frets is near flush with the top of the bridge so stopping here and calling it good. There are a few gaps in the joint that probably wouldn't fly for veteran builders but i am super happy and am going to wait until my shellac hardens up at least a couple of weeks before trying to glue this on. That is unless you all see something drastic here. :D
Well, this was by far the hardest part of putting together my Blues Creek Guitars kit so far. John's video's are the only source I found anywhere that gives a new person a good sense of what needs to happen to change the angles and get a good fit. So reminder to anyone needing to fit a dovetail: Google: youtube blues creek dovetail. And thank you John Hall for posting those! They are getting old but still quite useful!
Couple of thoughts:
I should have done a better fit without the fretboard glued on. I thought close was good but I got it set to within a couple of millimeters then glued on the fretboard but now have trouble getting the fretboard totally flush and seated leaving a little gap a the intersection. The angle of of the top doesn't seem to quite match the plane of the neck. John seems to cover this in his addendum video with all the sanding the neck to be flush with the top. I blew that part but it's close and straight. Think I can do better next time but I think I'd have have to remove my fretboard from the neck to do better on this one. It does seat a little better under clamping pressure but the picture shows the challenge.
Ensure the wings stay parallel to the body when sanding for elevation change. Any slight angle will cause a gap and mine was all over the place.
I actually bottomed out ( dovetail hit back wall of slot ) which means I probably sanded way too much from the wings trying to make them flush. Making the slot a little deeper was easy and fixed that problem.
I found that my favorite shim material is spruce scraps from the top with grain running lengthwise. The soft wood is super easy to shape. In gaining experience I sanded my shims to nothing and put new ones on at least 3 times. The original joint as shipped didn't need shims so perhaps with skill, one could just sand, fit, and go.
My dry fit is very tight and my straight edge off the frets is near flush with the top of the bridge so stopping here and calling it good. There are a few gaps in the joint that probably wouldn't fly for veteran builders but i am super happy and am going to wait until my shellac hardens up at least a couple of weeks before trying to glue this on. That is unless you all see something drastic here. :D