Voyage Air archtop?!?

[harvl]

I've been wanting to see if there would be any unusual challenges with the hinged neck on an archtop. Had a customer talk me into using him as a guinea pig so I thought I post the progress and results here for fun. He couldn’t afford having me built an entire guitar so he bought a Loar and sent it to be modified... if you are squeamish about “delicate” guitar surgery you may want to skip the first few images....

The first step was to remove the existing neck, for this I chose my fine-tooth neck removal tool... notice it does say "professional"


The first cut was made before the heel so I could get the truss rod out of the way.


Next I trimmed the heel back enough to get it into the neck mortising fixture

[Leftyprs]

Yikes!

[TacomaDR20]

Oh, this is gonna be fun to watch..

[harvl]

Originally Posted by Leftyprs

Yikes!

.... actually it's quite painless as long as you keep your thumbs out of the way

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by TacomaDR20

Oh, this is gonna be fun to watch..

That is the same immediate reaction I had!

- Glenn

[J.R. Rogers]

A neck-less Loar - Oh the Horror!! Can you fix her, doc?
This will be fun to watch.

[harvl]

That Loar was a nice little guitar... it was a shame to hack it up but the customer is always right! We can rebuild her... for much less than six million dollars too

Harv

[pgilmor]

Watching this thread is kind of like picking a scab; yeah, it might hurt and get messy, but you just can't help yourself...

[Tony_in_NYC]

Very delicate indeed. I have a special tool for certain jobs that works in a similar delicate fashion. It says "Hammer" on it, but I like to call it "My Little Friend" so that before I use it, I can yell, in my best Scarface/ Tony Montana impression,
"Say hello to My Little Friend!!"

[harvl]

Here's the body in my neck pocket fixture. I had to chisel some of the old heel away to get it to fit since the pocket is slightly narrower than the width of the heel.


I also had to make some custom shims to account for the arched top when it's clamped down.

[geordie]

Harvey, that first picture of you sawing the neck off reminded me when we needed a couple of guitars to work on doing neck repairs at luthier college, I was volunteered to break them off on a couple of old guitars. I placed them on the floor with the headstack on the bottom rung of a work bench and stomped on the neck.
It was the strangest feeling breaking things I'd spent most of my life making sure they didn't get damaged.

[harvl]

The body is held in place with toggle clamps.


The fixture rotates 90 deg for the cut to be made and locks in place, a dust collection hose captures as much of the dust and chips as possible.


The body removed from the fixture with the neck pocket cut.

[harvl]

Been away from the shop for a while... back at it now with more updates.

Here the neck extension is glued in place, I had to use the neck as a clamping guide to assure it would be in the right place and at the correct angle. This step was a bit more challenging than I had anticipated.


After the glue sets the neck is removed leaving just the extension


Because the hinge screw falls right on the glue joint I had to use a threaded insert and a machine screw to secure the hinge without splitting the extension block.


After the neck is cut the heel section is secured in place and the hinge is installed.

[jimmy bookout]

Jeez Harv, that's amazing. I can't imagine having the talent/patience to do what you do.

How are you going to deal with the floating bridge?

Jimmy

[harvl]

Originally Posted by jimmy bookout

Jeez Harv, that's amazing. I can't imagine having the talent/patience to do what you do.

How are you going to deal with the floating bridge?

Jimmy

I gave the guy 2 options: Screw the feet to the top or put the bridge in the side pocket... he chose side pocket