The neck attaches to the rim by means of the dowel stick. The dowel stick is glued to the heel of the neck where it meets the rim. When the neck and rim are assembled, the dowel stick passes through a hole in the rim and crosses to the opposite side, where it is secured by a screw.
To securely attach the dowel stick to the neck, a 3/4in hole is bored into the heel to accept a tenon on the dowel stick. This hole needs to be bored at a 3 degree angle from the fretboard similarly to cutting the radius in the previous post. I utilized the same jig to hold the neck at 3 degrees, but needed to find a way to bore a hole horizontally into the heel. Ideally this would be done with a Shopsmith or a horizontal boring machine or even a drill press. I don’t have any of those so I gave a shot at making my own boring machine. I fashioned a carriage that rode in the miter slot on my table saw and held my cordless drill. I provided for adjustment by using screws that could raise and lower the front and back of the drill. The neck jig was screwed to another carriage that also rode in the miter groove. Once the drill was aligned properly I used a 3/4in forester bit to bore a hole about 1 1/2in deep.
Horizontal boring machine
Screws on the base raise or lower the drill so the bit is parallel to the table
Interesting maple and ebony chips
After all that setup, the hole did end up a bit crooked. I think the effort required to drill into the hard maple and ebony overcame my tie-wrapped secured drill and pushed it off to the side. I’ll have to decide how to deal with this. The dowel stick must come out of the neck at the proper angle or everything will be off. I could try to plug the hole and try drilling again, but I think I have a better solution. When the time comes I think I will glue the dowel stick to the neck using West System epoxy. This way I can modify the tenon or the hole and not worry about a perfect fit as the epoxy will make up the difference. I’ll give it some thought.
Dowel stick tenon hole
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