Making a neck longer
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:03 pm
A friend whose health is declining is no longer able to build. I have taken on the completion of a guitar he was commissioned to make for a neighbour - a blackwood parlour. His limitations resulted in some glitches that needed to be rectified. I made a similar but slightly oversize bridge to cover some blemishes around the original bridge. The neck needed to be reset with a tapered ebony shim under the fretboard extension, and adjustments to the heel. With a lot of fiddling, the neck became shorter, so that the 12th fret was almost 1/8" past the body join. It might have been okay to leave that, and move the bridge to maintain the scale length, but that would have exposed some of the blemishes in the top. So I decided to lengthen the neck by building up the heel cheeks with ebony strips, to match the fretboard and bindings, and fit an ebony heel cap. I've considered this "solution" before, and I'm sure it's been done before, but I was afraid it would just shout MISTAKE! In the end, it solved a complicated problem, and actually looks pretty good. This builder finished with French polish, which I have not tried, so another friend is going to take that on. Bruce W.
