Building a Classical Guitar #3: The heel

The next step in the construction of the neck blank is attaching a heel block.

In this guitar, we are using a Spanish heel to attach the neck to the body of the guitar. The Spanish heel uses two slots separated by about 11 mm in the sides of the heel block. The guitar sides will then be inserted in these slots. You can see the slot in the next photo, but this will become clearer when we attach the sides.

In roughing out the shape of the heel of the guitar, the first cut (done with a bandsaw) is the curve shown above. The second cut with the bandsaw forms a ramp on the side of the heel.

At this point, I finished shaping the end of the heel block which will be inside the guitar. Then, I sealed the end grain with shellac.

In this picture, you can also see a wide rabbet on the end of the heel block. This is where the top will be glued onto the heel block.

Back to carving the heel, the third step is to put a curve into the ramp that was formed in the second cut above. This was done using chisels. I used a little template to help me make this slight curve the same on both sides of the neck.

The primary facet was then carved. I tried to make the facet look the same on both sides of the neck.

Secondary facets were then carved on both sides of the primary facet and from there it was a simple matter of smoothing everything out.

This was my first experience carving wood and it felt good being close to the wood with just a chisel. This mahogany was really nice to work with.

I’m done with the neck blank for now. I’ll finish carving the neck once the guitar body and fingerboard are attached.

-- Kevin