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Hi all,

Today we’ll bolt the neck to the body. I must say, I wasn’t that excited about doing this part because the book laid out instructions on doing this with a dovetail joint. If you’ve never seen one it’s ok – it’s probably the most difficult way to do this. In July of last year I was invited to visit Marc Beneteau’s shop in St. Thomas, Ontario – he’s been building acoustic guitars since 1974. The method he uses for attaching neck to the bodies is a simple bolting system. I figured if it’s worked for him for the past 35 years then it should work for me. LOL

So here I’ve found the centre line and marked out where I want the threaded inserts to be. I purchased the bolts and inserts at Home Depot. They’re the exact bolts / inserts that Marc Beneteau uses. (View his website HERE)

Next I took the threaded insert (it has threads on the inside for the bolt and the outside to screw into the neck heel) and found a drill bit slightly smaller than it. I needed to drill out enough wood to countersink the insert but not so much that its threads wouldn’t grab tightly. I wrapped a piece of tape around the bit so I knew how deep I needed to go.

So once that was done I could thread the inserts into the neck heel with a big common screw driver. Not a perfect job but it worked – and in further posts you’ll see that it actually worked better than I thought it would!

Next time we’ll put the bolts into the body.

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