Another Fixit Tale

Dan Erlewine

I still had the other body stored away and around 2000 I made another Tele. Again, I gave it a relic Blonde finish, and again it was a fine sounding guitar. However, this timeI put a baritone neck on it that was made for me by Fred Stuart at the Fender Custom Shop. I installed anchors in the fretboard and made a deluxe set of my screw on capos for it.

At one point, the action got a bit too high, and I discovered that the catalpa had cracked along the grain lines right where the butt end of the neck fit snugly against the back end of the neck cavity — pushing the loose piece of wood into the neck pickup cavity.

Here’s my fix for the problem

I milled out a good sized cavity in the neck pocket and connecting into the pickup cavity about 5/16” deep.

I made a block of white oak laminated ….

… with ebony to fill in the area.

After epoxying in the block I milled crosswise slots to kind of lock-in the block and filled them with ebony and more epoxy. At this point the body is screwed down and clamped to a table on my mill-drill.

I smoothed the edges of the block with the mill.

Next, because the wood is somewhat soft, I knurled a 1/2” aluminum tube and cut them to length, and bored clearance holes thru them. These would be epoxied into the body.

Here I have just drilled and plugged the neck . . .

. . . in preparation for screwed & glued 10-24 Phillips-head machine screws — a great way to hold on a neck!

Neck ferrules installed.

Then it was time for touchup.

I mixed up more than one shade of off-white for the job.

This was back in my old shop, and for small jobs I would spray out this window. It’s a totally-enclosed, explosion-proof fan from Grainger, and I have had owned four of them over the years (some were built in and left in earlier shops). While I do have an air-compressor, I prefer to use a compressed-air tank for air brushing.

Just another view of the old garage-shop.

Looking pretty good to me; I am using the SMac holder with the 10-24 bolts fastened.

A little cleaning and polishing . . .

. . . putting back a little checking.

Installing the pickup using tooth-pick locaters, foam, and springs — a tip from the great Michael Stevens, one of the original founders for the Fender Custom Shop and a tremendous artist and luthier.