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I'm about to do the final shaping of the neck on my Stew-Mac kit, and I'm dealing with some funky pitting of the wood down on the heel. Looking for suggestions on the best way to deal with this before proceeding. When I received the kit I didn't think it would be too much of an issue to sand out, but upon closer inspection, some of the pitting is pretty deep, and I don't have a lot of wood to remove in that area. What would you do to deal with it? Fill it and sand back? Carefully file it down? As always, any advice is appreciated.

If this is the way you got it and have not worked it yet, you could exchange it, but then there is the cost of postage. I would use coarse sandpaper, but every one has different skills. I think filling is not good unless you plan to paint.

seeing as its a mortise style heel, you have plenty to work with - just sand it out ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Zac, as long as there's enough heel left, I'd recommend using a rasp, even a four-in-hand, for shaping. As I recall, there's too much to remove to make sandpaper a viable option. Rasp, 120-180 grit, 220 grit, then raise the grain per the Stewmac instructions.


Ken Jones
Mountain Song Guitars

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

+ 1

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

no matter the type of heel there is plenty of room to sand out what appears to be minor tear out from initial shaping... rasps, then sandpaper, I'd say..

I'd argue that you paid good money for the neck. It should have never left the building.

Can it be fixed? Absolutely! Should you have to fix it?

My 2cents.. M

It's such a minor issue. I don't really see the point in sending it back. If someone can't remove a little bit of heel material then maybe they should be on the other side of the fence i.e. buying a Guitar, not trying to make one.

The post above has got it right. In the process of shaping the heel the tearout will be removed -- it doesn't look very deep and the neck still needs a fair amount of material removal to get a decent shape at the heel.

Of course it will clean up! That really wasn't my point.

I'm not really sure why my opinions tend to p**s some people off so much. I though this was a conversation about building guitars. Yes, I'm only on my 17th but I'll keep trying...

If that's the way it was when you received it, I'd send the photos to Stewmac. I wouldn't be surprised if they sent you a replacement and told you to keep that one to practise on. I've never had anything other than excellent customer service from Stewmac.

Dave makes a good point. At the very least you are giving them a heads up for future orders and what you are looking for.
IMHO there is plenty of material left to clean up. Quicker and easier to work with it than start shipping things back and forth, make sure a new one has no problems and is acclimated to your shop.

You didn't p*ss me off. I was just making the very obvious point that one should have the facilty to rectify that heel in a matter of minutes. It's nothing. Nothing that a coarse file, a bit of sandpaper and a few minutes can't sort out. One could spend far more time arranging for the thing to be sent back! He has a whole Guitar to assemble. I suspect he will be faced with much harder tasks during the course of that build.

I have seen necks in kits offered in different states of finish. Some have been perfectly done by CNC and are ready to install. Some are roughed out only (like this one), and some are blanks of wood that you need to glue up and totally shape yourself. So, I am curious what was this represented as from the supplier?

All my heels look like that after I rough shape them with rasps, then I go to 80 grit sandpaper for 5 mintes, and it's cleaned up.

I've had mahogany necks that have really given me troubles in that area. I ended up thinning epoxy and soaking the area, then it all sanded down just fine. Before I did that, the end grain fibers would just kind of "fir" when I sanded them, regardless of grit.
I agree that you should send these pics to StewMac. Even if you don't expect something from them, it would be good for their quality control to see what is leaving the shop.

Agreed.

Regards, M

Send the picture to Stewmac. I'm concerned the wood is already weak and could result in a sub par neck. It's possible the wood partially rotted and is softer than usual.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

It's just a little tear out of the end grain, not rot. Shape it up with a rasp and sandpaper. No big deal!

Agree, sand it out and admire your handiwork in solving the problem

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Greg
http://garibaldiinstruments.com/

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'm modeling this neck to the one on my daily player, and the heel is already pretty close in size. I'm capable of dealing with it (especially since I can afford to remove more wood), just looking for some input on the best way to go about it. As far as returning the neck goes, I've already put a fair bit of work into this one...at this point, I'd rather treat this as a learning experience (and from what it sounds like, a fairly easy one) than start over. I'm planning on building a lot more guitars after this one, and every problem I've come up against on this first one has turned into a lesson on how to do a better job next time. Again, thanks to everyone who took time to respond to this or any of my other questions, this forum is an amazing learning resource and I'm much further along in my building because of it!

Hitting this part with a scary sharp chisel gets my adrenaline going. And my Michelangelo.

Enter the heel with the flat side in, then flip it around when you start to flange out.

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Pat

I like to shape the heel with a knife and then sand down the facets.
Seeing as you have photos of it now, I would go at it with a knife or rasps if you prefer and if for some reason it still looks crap I'd contact stewmac and ask for a replacement.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

You've got the right attitude Zac. Consider fixing this one as practice for carving your own neck next time. Having said that, Stew-Mac has been great for replacing an item. I called them about having a $46 router bit with a chip in it. With no questions asked, they immediately sent me a replacement and said that I didn't have to bother to send the old one back. The same thing happened with a nut file. The file seemed to wear out prematurely. Again, with no questions asked they sent me a new one...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com