wooly wrote:I know the harder the finish, the higher the chance of cracking.
It seems that Ric has a very hard finish rather than a softer nitro finish.
I polished the guitar a year ago and the polish remained in the joint where the finish has flaked away.
What I understand about the 330 neck joint, is that the tenon is quite long and goes in deep into he body.
How can that much surface with Titebond give way?
SG's have the smallest surface for their tenons and they seem to crack only when they are much older.
How tight is the 330 joint to begin with?
I will email you.
It's easier for me to emil pictures than through this site.
Thanks,
Mike
Yep--the harder, etc. But let's fine-tune our language. Nitro is
brittle, besides being unstable when applied thickly. (If you think that CV checks, well...nitro will go nuts if applied in anywhere near the thickness of a typical CV clear coat!). Conversion varnish, is, on the other hand, more resilient and less brittle. Nitro does have a softer surface, depending upon color, than CV, though.
Anytime you polish a wooden surface with a finish crack, the kaolin filler in the polish will remain in the crack. It's the typical whitish powder once the liquids in the polish have evaporated.
I've never actually measured the depth of a 330 tenon but I'd say it's in the 6" range, give or take an inch. SG necks are set with hide glue, which is less flexible than AR, but still heat-disassemblable. The neck joint of an SG is notoriously badly design-engineered.
The neck tenon joint is tricky, in terms of clearance. If it's fitted too tightly, the AR glue will mostly scrape off when the tenon is inserted into the pocket; if it's too loose, the normal wood expansion that occurs when water hits the wood fibers, will not be sufficient to fill the gap between the tenon and its socket. The glue will fill the gap instead, and its ductility means that the neck is susceptible to shifting. I'm not saying that this is what happened to your guitar; I don't know enough about its history to venture a guess about this. I'm just laying out some criteria.
The fit of the tenon into its socket needs to be accurate to a couple of thousandths of an inch. Not too hard to do in a hand-building situation. In even small series-production, however, this must be closely controlled and is the most critical joint in a set-neck guitar.
