Slotted Acoustic Guitar Headstock
Source: Guitar Building Articles – The Guitar Neck
Acoustic Guitar Headstock Detailing:
Required Tools and Materials:
Woodworking Marking Knife
Plexiglas Template
Low Angle Block Plane
Drill Press
Takumi Dozuki 9-Inch Super Fine Cut Saw
Woodworker Try-Square
Forstner Drill Bits
3/8″ Milling Drill Bit
Wood Fence for Drill Press
3/4″ Plywood Sacrifice Block for Drill Press
Center Punch
Plastic Tipped Hammer
Band Saw
The above tools are conveniently listed for you
in the table below:
Acoustic Guitar Headpiece:
Acoustic Guitar Headpieces are far less detailed than their Classical Guitar cousins – unless of coarse you plan on building a Slotted Acoustic Guitar Headpiece, as shown in the illustration above.
This is an excerpt from the peg-head drawing from our Martin 000-28vs Guitar Plan that will be coming out shortly. This headpiece is not only slotted it also has the “V” neck joint, made famous by Martin in their pre-war guitars.
More typically, the Acoustic Guitar has quite a simple headstock arrangement.
Acoustic Guitar Headpiece
Source: Guitar Building Articles – The Guitar Neck
Typically on our Acoustic Guitar Plans that we have available here at Ultimate Guitar Building, we show our own Signature design of our guitars that we build. You should take out a piece of tracing paper and use our plan template as a guide. Then sketch away on your own unique design and see what you come up with.
Make Your Headpiece Template:
After you have completed your design, you should make a Plexiglas template of your Acoustic Guitar Headstock. Be very precise with this template as you could be transferring errors directly to you workpiece. Be sure to transfer all of the machine head center-line information and the headpiece design to the template very precisely. Make sure to strike a clear center-line down the center of your template. This way you can align everything symmetrically around the center-line.
The raw guitar neck and the headstock should be perfectly square if you followed the previous articles. This will allow you to make your layout lines very precisely. I would recommend the use of a good Marking Knife for this or a very sharp white pencil for the darker woods.
First, clearly mark the center-line of the neck, the neck headstock and the guitar nut, by striking a clear straight line. Next take a Woodworkers Try-Square and mark the location of the back side of the Guitar Nut, again with a clean straight mark of the Marking Knife.
Trim the Headstock To Fit The Nut:
Now is time to Trim the Headstock for the Guitar Nut. While holding the Try-Square tightly against the edge of the neck, take a fine tooth dovetail saw such as the Takumi Dozuki 9-Inch Super Fine Cut Saw and begin to cut through the layers of veneer. Before you start, make sure the saw if perfectly vertical and aligned with the mark for the nut. Take slow, long even strokes and check your depth very often until you are nearly through. Then take it really slow until you break through, being careful not to cut into the neck wood.
Mark Your Headstock Layout:
Lay your Plexiglas template on the headstock, being careful to align the center-lines and the line for the guitar nut. Carefully trace with a very sharp white pencil or a marking knife the outline of the headpiece, machine head peg holes.
Trim The Two Sides Of The Headstock:
Next trim the sides of the headpiece with a pull saw, a band saw or a low angle hand plane. Be cautious to keep everything square and trim up to the line or to the center of the line.
Drilling the Tuning Machine Peg-Holes:
Chuck up a Brad Point Bit in the Drill Press. By using the Brad Point Bit, you will minimize tear-out. They cut a nice clean hole as well that needs little additional sanding to finish them off.
Tip #1:
A quick and easy way to drill all (6) holes the exact same distance from the edge of the peg-head is to securely clamp a wooden caul to the base of the drill press. Use this as a fence to guide the headpiece beneath the drill. Now you only have to be concerned about lining up the drill in one direction. Be sure to set the depth stop of the drill press to drill into your sacrifice block about 1/8″ or so.
Tip #2:
A really nice finishing touch for your headpiece is to countersink the washers that clamp down the machine head pegs on the top of the headpiece. To do this you need to drill them out with a Forstner Drill BEFORE you drill your holes for the tuner pegs. I like to use a 1/32″ bit and drill a pilot hole. This way the Forstner bit self centers as well as the Brad Point Bit.
Tip #3:
You will need to drill the holes with the headpiece veneer down. Place a piece of scrap wood between the headstock veneer and the drill-press table. This will prevent any tear-out what-so-ever and you will be left with perfectly clean exit holes.
Cutting the Signature:
The Signature for the Ultimate Guitar Building Guitar Plans is quite simple. Not quite as simple as Martins, but it is very easy to cut with the proper tools.
Just follow the template cut line and use a Band Saw, Coping Saw or Scroll Saw to cut within about 1mm of the line. Next take some Surface Sanders and carefully sand to the line.
What is Next?
The outline is cut and finished. The machine head holes are cut and countersunk for the washers. What is the next step? If you don’t plan on putting purfling around the perimeter of your headpiece or inlaying any shell, you are done. Otherwise move on to the next article, which covers edge purfling and binding. This is covered in Headstock Detailing Part 5.
Tags: cutting guitar pegheads, guitar headstock, guitar neck, guitar string slots, how to build a guitar
