The best method I've seen thank you! The screws are genius. My book has me blocking the end of the headstock so it won't move. It moved! All over. Use the screws folks!

I really appreciate you sharing your jig. That and the screws in the off cuts will help me this weekend! Impeccable timing.

I love your sanding jig. That looks like the real key to your process. Rock'n' Good

Chris, have you thought about putting the scarf joint in the headstock? Respectfully, I feel the problem with placing the scarf in the neck is that so much of the joint is removed once the trussrod slot is routed and the profile is carved. When I lived in Queensland, I saw more than a few of these 2nd fret scarf joints simply peel open with the hot humid climate. (Although to be fair, these were factory instruments, not nice bespoke axes such as yours!) If the scarf is positioned in the headstock, there is far more of the glue line left in the final neck, plus your veneers hide and strengthen the joint. I worked for a well known luthier who does this. He also has two machine heads positioned to be through the scarf joint. With threaded gotoh-style tuners, these also help I guess, because they are like little clamps. Thanks again for your great content!

Excellent demonstration !

I've really enjoyed your videos and have learned a lot. I'm ready to make a scarf joint in mahogany today and just happened to see this video. Even though I've made a couple dozen scarf joints I learned quite a bit that will make it much easier than the complicated process I've been using. Thanks!

Top notch, dude! As always, super informative and useful.

This video is as brilliant as all the others you published. What I do appreciate the most are the simple yet ingenious tools you build yourself for getting your results. And the jig you use in this video is just one example. There is no other yt channel where you can learn that much about building guitars than on your channel. Thank you very much! Awesome work! 👍🏻😎👍🏻

Thank you for a wonderful and informative video, I just recently got into the hobby and still learning!

Great tip with the screws for glue up, simplest way I've seen especially since that's a portion that will be removed later anyway... Just awesome

Smart use of the screws to get a nice glue up.

amazing video, you always have very creative solutions.

What a lovely sanding jig,,,,,thank you,,,

Thanks for the video! Learned something new today :-)

Nicely detailed , great info. Thanks.

Excelent work sr!!

Lots of good info. Thanks!👍😎🎸🎶

I love this sanding sled and the idea of indexing screws! I’ve never tackled a scarf joint yet but this opens up some possibilities for someone without a jointer or band saw. I do have a question about headstock thickness: this seems very thick. Perhaps it would be easier to thin the smaller piece down before gluing rather than later?

Thanks, you answered a lot of questions i had.

I just made box a little bit like yo urs, but just a plane angled box with right angle, and then I made the angle with surface planing machine. The box is on the otherside of blade and the wood comes behind the blade. Job done in a minute.

great video, good intel

This was great!

great as always!

The only improvement I would make is to make the pilot hole for the screw for the head stock wood piece slightly larger so that the screw doesn't prevent the clamps from doing there job. Since the screws are spirals they might retain a slight gap between the wood pieces since they are not fully screwed down.

Really helpful. Thank you

THAT was awesome.. thanks a lot.. subbed!

Good video....ive been toying with the idea of making a guitar neck....this has helped im just looking at all the vids and will probably combine a couple of methods....question is the stock you made in this video to make 2 necks being as wide as it is...?...I'd have to believe so

excellent method thanks !!!!!!!

Great vid Chris.. I have a 1997 Samick artist series SG that has a flat scarf joint where the peg head face meets the neck..(where the volute would be) straight across.. almost undetectable.. while most scarf joints i see are in the upper neck and thus show up as a circular joint. Must take more skill to plan the 'flat" scarf joint for location that just having it lie into the rounded neck.. curious..

Great video, truly. Does using layers negate the need for this? Say 5 layers of alternating grained wood would give the neck the strength to just carve out the headstock?

Hi Chris, do you have a method to machine the two surfaces in your CNC. Do you do the neck and then the headstock as two seperator operations? If so, how do you align the headstock to ensure its square to the neck when you tilt it up on the CNC? Could you show that on a video some time please?

So i got a mapple wood (german Mountain Mapple) do i need to scarf the joint or can i still do it out of one block? my neck already is sawed out round around (only the outlines nothing like the thickness and so on :/

Hi Chris,..nice jig and well taught about. How do you determine where exactly the volute will be ? Mostly from where i see, the highest point comes right under the middle of the nut and sometimes the highest point is just after the nut towards the head stock. Has that something to do with comfort or somebody with bigger hands or esthetics,.. besides strenghten the neck ? Thanks Chris ! Greets from Belgium.

Great video! I have just one question:I didn't quite understand how you determined the angle. Does it make a big difference if it's slightly off, or can you determine the angle pretty much by eye?

Chris, a question if I may: I like to start with a -75" thick plank, and prefer a .6" thick headstock. Do you recommend thinning the headstock before gluing it to the neck in the scarf joint manner, or do you recommend thinning the headstoch by CNC after I've glued the scarf joint? Thanks!

This is a great video and I plan on incorporating this process on my next build. Would you be willing to share/post the plans or templates for your scarf jig and sanding jig?

Love your videos, Chris. Related neck question: since Les Paul headstocks break so often and are repaired with wood inserts, why aren't they just made with strong inserts to begin with? Could they even use aluminum or titanium inserts like dowel rods, machined so that they line up? Thanks.

Can you just go ahead and thickness the headstock piece to the thickness you want the headstock to be? Seams the only thing it would alter would be the location of where the scarf joint glue line would meet the underside of the fretboard due to the shifting of the location of the break over angle at the end of the nut.

Hi Chris, At 1:40 you display a comparison between a one-piece neck and a scarf-joint neck. As you know, quality one piece guitar necks are constructed with quarter-sawn wood “oriented” with the grain running “vertically”to the fret-board. However, the wood you displayed in your video (for the one-piece neck) appears to be quarter-sawn but it is flipped the wrong way and displayed with the grain running “parallel” to the fret-board. This is the worst way to ‘orient’ the wood for one-piece neck construction. In other words, if the one-piece neck blank in your video @ 1:30 was flipped 90° (where the grain is essentially standing-up on its edge vertically and intersects with the fret-board perpendicular versus parallel as in your graphic comparison), would this yield a more stable neck and headstock? Yes I agree. No matter what a scarf joint is stronger.

Thanks again Chris, Question. Do you prefer placing the headstock portion above the neck? I have read where others prefer to place the headstock portion underneath the neck. Thanks again

What about the multiple Ibanez guitars I've seen with a break at the scarf joint? Is that because they didn't have a volute?

So basically the strongest neck/headstock of all time would be a multi-piece neck with a scarf joint, volute, and with bottom of the neck spoke wheel truss rod adjustment so you don't have to big chunk of wood taken out near the headstock for traditional truss rod adjustment. Would you ever try this?

do you have a video on the solid one you cut on the cnc

Thanks for the video. Very similar to my own process except I use wooden dowels instead of screws to keep the 2 pieces from slipping. My router jig is the same structure as your sanding jig except the sides are higher. A long router sled rides atop the sides. Although, it seems to me that your sanding jig is a lot less scary than my router jig. I may have to “borrow” that design from you 🤔

Thanks for the vid! What do you do if the scarf-joint is out of square?

do you have plans available for the scarf joint sanding jig?

Do you have plans for this sanding jig? Thanks

can you share your jig builds???

what kind of jointer do you use?

How many degrees is that headstock angle?

What degree angle did you cut

What if the one piece is quarter-sawn?

5th.

Ok, but there was a slappy workbench. Have notice that many luthiers hav quite slappy workbenches. Cant really understand this. Otherwise You have a fully ok scarf joint progress. Something for me to think of. Thanks.

you are doing it the hard way do it on the cnc

Ouch, It's a lot of wasted maple wood, too long, too wide :( with this wide you can make 2 maple necks

Better yet, multi laminate blanks and carve the neck out of that. No scarf joint to see.