How dou determine your neck heel width?

[Darren Kern]

How dou? Dang Chihuahua, walking on my keyboard. I meant "How do you"

As I progress through my first scratch built mandos, I may be overthinking things, but when you first cut out your neck profile, how do you determine how much neck heel to leave? I know the Siminoff and Stew Mac archtop plans have a fairly narrow heel on their patterns, but I've seen some other instrument build pictorials where people start with a good bit wider neck heel.

Does it primarily have to do with how big you want the button to be, or if you use a tapered dovetail versus straight, etc? I'm curious to hear how you came up with your neck heel shape.

Also do you use a different neck profile for flattops versus archtops?

[Lefty Luthier]

The Siminoff heel button shape on the F5 seems optimum to me visually. From my point of view the actual size of the wood part depends on what type of binding you plan to use. Standard 0.060 vs 0.090 ABS or Celluloid should have the wood part of the heel adjusted so that both binding thicknesses result in the same outer dimension. Should you choose a wood binding, I suggest going with a significantly larger heel to minimize the chance of cracking the binding over the tip of the button. In any event when doing the rough cutting of the neck and backboard leave at least 0.25 inch extra length and width so that you can home in on the ideal contour without risking a too short/narrow button.

[sunburst]

I look at the entire heel and neck shaft in the context of the position on the body, and try for a shape that is aesthetic to me from every angle, minimal in it's proportions with no 'extra wood' left behind, only that needed for strength and stability. (It's the way nature usually works, look at tree limbs and such to see similar "designs".) That is a thing that took me a long time to learn to see, and I sometimes spend undue time sculpting the neck heel, but to me it is an important design aspect of a stringed instrument. I want the back profile of the instrument to show a neck heel in proportion to everything else, and the curve from that heel 'button' to sweep gracefully into the neck shaft in every direction. I know none of that is very specific, partly because it is all subjective to one degree or another, but I feel like that type of thinking is the way to approach design features for the best look.

[Michael Lewis]

Nicely put, John.

[Rick Lindstrom]

I think that whatever looks good to you is fine.

I make my heels a little larger and rounder than most because years of working with violins taught me that the joint between the button (on the back) and the heel has a lot to do with making the attachment of the neck to the body reliable especially if you're using a tenon mounting style. On fiddles at least, once that button/ heel joint fails, it won't be too long before the heel to block joint goes too.

I don't imagine that it makes a lot of difference on a well fit dovetail joint, but I still make them a little larger for the peace of mind. YMMV.

Rick