Can this neck be saved?

[Eric Knapp]

Another rookie mistake. When I was gluing this laminated neck together I put a piece of maple veneer in the middle. It appears to have slipped when clamping and now that I'm shaping the neck it is not big enough to appear. The neck is almost to the final thickness in the photo and all you can see is a gap or some glue, not the maple.

I can see two solutions. One is to remove the fretboard and make a new neck. The other is to somehow cut a small channel and inset a strip of something.

What would you do?

Thanks,

-Eric (the discouraged rookie)

P.S.- Note to self, don't do that.

[Jarno Verhoeven]

On my recent build I hadn't clamped the edge of the top to the body wings fully, so I also had a few of those gaps. Using a veneer saw, I made the gaps slightly wider and uniform in thickness, and glued in a few strips of the same wood. Worked really well, but you do still soo something (ultimately though, it was on the glueing surface between of body and neck so it will not be visible, did it for "structural reasons" only (piece of mind if you will), and mine were a lot worse than the tiny gaps in your picture.
Maybe I'd try white woodglue and sawdust first, be sure not to use tightbond III because that's brown. Regular woodglue is better, dries up more transparent.
So yeah, don't throw it away, and don't be discouraged

[Glenn Howland]

Here's a radical idea.

Remove the fretboard.

Affix the neck face down to a straight (jointed, if possible) 1 x 4 or similar plank, precisely centered. I did this and used double sided carpet tape.

Rip it exactly in half on a table saw.

Add a slip in the center and glue back. You'll need to re-route the truss rod slot, but will have plenty of extra material to re-shape the neck.

I did this to a rough neck when I learned that the tapered fretboard was 1/8 inch wider than the neck blank (that I had earlier trimmed for some ill-remembered reason). It worked.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=656532CE

[Eric Knapp]

Here's what I've come up with. I used a modified tool to gouge a narrow channel where the maple veneer should be. I will get some black epoxy or CA glue and fill the channel. This guitar is still a learning instrument so making a new neck is not necessary. Here's what the channel looks like now.

I think this will work well enough. Onward...

-Eric

[Jarno Verhoeven]

Very nice! If it is deep and uniform enough you could still glue in a spline. Depending on how much shaping you still need to do, cleaning out epoxy from surrounding pores could be a little bit of a PITA.
Good that you got it cleaned up again.

[Glenn Howland]

Nice save!