Tenon Cut

Having routed out the neck pocket, it was time to start on the neck tenon to fit in it. Because of the angled neck, you need to cut the 'edges' on the side and bottom of the neck tenon (where the tenon meets the rest of the neck) at an angle to line up with the body. 

I copied a jig I'd seen Big D Guitars on YouTube use for this step:

I use the same 4 degree angled MDF triangles as before to hold the neck at the required angle. These were glued on as usual using the Luthiers Greatest Trick. The angle the neck block then makes with the 'table' at the top of the jig then represents the angle it will make against the guitar body.

 From the side:

And all clamped up.

I could then use the table to rest my Japanese saw on (which cuts on the pull stroke, and has a very narrow kerf). The resulting cut would therefore be in the same plane as the table, and by extension the same plane as the guitar body;

These are the cuts that are made on each side, and the bottom of the neck tenon:

And the resulting cut, I used the little ruler in to check that the cut was straight, and was in the right place at both the front and back of the neck:

And the other side:

This jig took a long time to set up and check everything was straight. It's a nice way to reliably make the cut, but I might in the future make it at a different point in the construction - or make something to allow the neck blank to be positioned easier.

These are the cuts that result:

I then used the neck template and the router to route out the shape of the neck tenon from the top:

Yielding this:

I used chisels and files to remove the rest of the material, test fitting it into the body along the way and failing to take any pictures until...

And from the side:

The neck tenon in largely done. However, there are two issues with it:

     - it is slightly looser than I want. I can correct this by glueing thin veneers to the edge of the tenon, and then sanding down again to size.
    - the second photo, from the side , has a small gap in the joint between the body and the neck. This suggests that something needs a little squaring up around the area.

Basically, the joint needs tweaking - which doesn't surprise me. I'll get onto this next week.