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dowelling and redrilling neck screws?


solderjunkie

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I have - I used golf tees to dowel and re-drill a MIM Jazz neck to fit an SX P body... I sanded the finish off the tees, drilled the holes to be a tight fit to the tees, used some quality wood glue, and drove 'em home... A day later, I cut them off, then dremeled them flush, and started the re-drilling...

 

I've posted about the project here before - it went quite well... Please let me know if I can be of any more help...

 

 

 

- georgestrings

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I have - I used golf tees to dowel and re-drill... - georgestrings

 

 

Golf tees?

 

Brilliant!!! I have some of those, but not for golf. I use them to plug vacuum lines during auto repairs.

 

I was going to try to find some hardwood dowels, but the home-supply stores only had soft wood.

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Golf tees?


Brilliant!!! I have some of those, but not for golf. I use them to plug vacuum lines during auto repairs.


I was going to try to find some hardwood dowels, but the home-supply stores only had soft wood.

 

 

 

 

I got the idea from a friend who is a master carpenter - he uses them to repair stripped out holes for hinges on door frames...

 

 

 

 

 

- georgestrings

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Further question and concern...


Two of the new holes will slightly overlap the dowelled holes.


The wood I'm putting in the dowelled holes will have the grain parallel to the screw.


Will the dowel crack along the grain?

 

 

 

Some of mine overlapped partially - I didn't sweat any grains being paralleled, and didn't have any troubles... I drilled the holes for that the tees were a very tight fit - applied glue to both the tees and the holes, drove 'em in - and the next day, after the glue had set up properly, that {censored} was hard as a rock.... Make sure you properly drill new pilot holes, both in diameter and depth, and put some wax on the screws before you run them in for the 1st time - and you should be good to go...

 

 

 

- georgestrings

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Further question and concern...


Two of the new holes will slightly overlap the dowelled holes.


The wood I'm putting in the dowelled holes will have the grain parallel to the screw.


Will the dowel crack along the grain?

 

 

If you drill the right pilot hole, which you should always do with any hardwood, you'll minimize the chance of cracking, but the dowel should be a resistance fit in the hole (not so tight as to scrape off all of the glue) and it's an almost zero chance that it would crack.

 

I've done a LOT of doweling projects and this is a very simple procedure that isn't as touchy as some may think. FWIW, it's unlikely that golf tees will be hardwood. If there's a Lowe's or Home Depot in driving distance, look there, they always stock oak dowels. Use Titebond glue...it's inexpensive and more than strong enough...any glue that's stronger than the wood is fine, since the the glue does not provide any strength. Even Elmer's glue is fine.

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A little background on the "project":

 

In my parts stash I had a lovely one-piece maple MIK Squier neck, a beat-up black "P" pickguard, a Lindy Fralin "P" pickup, some 250K pots, some Tele chrome-domes, and a set of Wilkinson tuners. I decided to put together a straight-up punkrock bass.

 

I assembled it with a used "P" body I got locally that had a Wilkinson brass-saddle bridge. It is a super-light ash body painted black. It looks like the previous owner was a member of the "pickguard of the month" club... it has an assload of screwed-up pickguard holes (wood glue and toothpicks fixed that already:D)

 

I wanted to just "throw it together" and see how it sounded before spending the time to relocate the neck screw holes. There is a 1/4" gap between the neck heel and the pocket, so the dowel-and-redrill will fix it.

 

I took it to the studio Sunday and rocked with it for a little while. I played it with a fat pick and a heavy hand... and it sounds awesome! (especially for being made essentially of "spare parts")

 

I'll fix the neck this weekend and it will be a permanent member of my family :thu:

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I would stick with wood glue as well. I've never tried anything else for wood joints, so I cannot attest to the strength of other glues. But I know that a properly-made wood glue joint will be stronger than the wood itself. So I find no reason to work with epoxy... especially since it is often more cumbersome to deal with epoxy.

 

As for the splitting... you need to drill an anchor hole before you drive a screw into it. If you plugged it properly and drilled the correct size anchor hole... you should have no issues at all. It should be like there was never even a hole there (strength wise).

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plastic inserts for wall fixing should do

i repaired our wardrobe hinge fixings with them

i cleaned out the old hole to the diameter of the insert

cut it to length using the 'head' of the insert

tapped it into place..

and insert the fixing screws

these expand the insert in the hole and give a tight fixing

 

uno1.jpg

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No epoxy glues. Epoxy does NOT soak into wood grain as deeply as a proper wood glue with penetrating agents. Epoxy is a surface-friction bond. Wood glue bonds to the fibers of the wood itself.

 

And you can easily drill the hole larger and use a dowel bigger than the hole itself. This will give you fresh wood to screw into.

 

Forstner bit, tight fit requiring a mallet to tap it in, and plenty of glue. You'll be fine.

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