- Question—What are the preferred materials used as fillers
when replacing the tuning machines?—Joe
Pitman
Answer—I presume
you're referring to filling the old screw holes, Joe.
I drill the old holes larger with a #44 or #45 bit, then
fill this hole with a piece of round toothpick.
Clip the point off the toothpick, insert it with
TiteBond, clip off the excess toothpick and razor off
the remainder so it is level with the surface of the
headstock tuner plate face. You can then drill new holes
to fit the new tuners; overlapping the hole into the
toothpick fill works just fine if the hole locations for
the new tuners require this.
-
Question—
When gluing the fingerboard to the neck I have a problem
of having gaps you can see from the side. When I use
wood filler it never seems to look right. Is there
anything I can do to make this look smoother. The
fingerboards I use are pre-slotted and usually rosewood.
If you have any advice I would greatly appreciate it.—Jason,
Detroit, MI
Answer—Three
things will have a bearing on the glue joint gaps
problem, Jason—
(1) The fit of the fingerboard to the gluing surface
of the neck must be true. It's important that the neck
gluing surface be very flat from side to side of the
neck and that it be straight from end to end. Same thing
is true of the fingerboard gluing surface. This is so
that the gluing surfaces will be as close to
wood-to-wood as possible.
(2) You need to use lots and lots of clamps when
gluing the fingerboard. I use over 30 clamps...there're
just about as many clamps as it's possible to squeeze
into the available space. It's especially important that
the fingerboard edges be clamped, as there is a tendency
for the neck and, especially, the fingerboard to go
convex because of wood expansion from the water in the
glue. (Do not use epoxy to glue a fingerboard as a way
of defeating this; epoxy creates a moisture barrier
between fingerboard and neck which will cause neck
backbow when humidity rises.) I use strip cauls for
clamping in order not to damage the fingerboard surface.
Do not dampen the gluing surfaces before applying glue;
this will help minimize expansion of the gluing surface.
(3) Use lots and lots of glue when gluing a
fingerboard to a neck; you will want to see great globs
of squeezed out glue...cleaning that up is the least of
your problems. This helps make sure there is something
between the fingerboard and neck and not just air.
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