Filling & re-drilling neck holes

guitarcookie1

The screw holes in the neck of my twelve-string build appear to have been drilled by a partially sighted gibbon and are far too big to be of any use. 

Would it be ok to fill them using matchsticks & Titebond before re-drilling them? 

Maynehead

Normal screw holes can be filled this way but the neck screws are under a lot of tension and matchsticks may be too soft to hold the neck securely.

The ideal fix is to enlarge the existing holes and fill them with hard wood dowels + wood glue, then redrill on top of the dowels. However, you can always try the matchstick method first, and see if the neck is stable. If not you can fall back to doing it the proper way.

I'd use toothpicks instead of matchsticks though as they are at least made from harder wood.

Roland

For preference I'd use something a bit harder that matchsticks. Cocktail sticks are harder, but often too narrow. Ideally you'd cut some bits of maple or other hard wood to fit. You can sand them down. Better still, if you have the tools, then drill a series of holes with decreasing diameters, in a piece of metal. You can squeeze your pieces of sanded wood through the holes to get compressed, round plugs.

ICBM

The best solution is to pack the holes tightly with wood glue and toothpicks or other hardwood, then put the screws in directly with the glue wet and no drilling, then leave it to set.

This produces high compression between the new wood and the remnants of the old thread, and a very strong glue bond. If you let the glue dry first or if you drill the holes out and dowel, the screws will be going into uncompressed wood endgrain, which is much weaker.

If you're going to drill out and dowel, you need to use side-cut plugs so the screws are going into that rather than endgrain.

I've used the wet-glue method on dozens of stripped neck screws and it's definitely strong enough - I also once tested various methods to destruction using a scrap neck, and this won.

WezV

I always do plugs if the holes are significantly worn or in the wrong place.  Don't even refer to them as dowels.  Dowels don't work.  You need a plug cutter and matching drill bit and some spare wood.  I make sure the grain of the  plug is similar to the neck wood and going the same way - normally i have an arrow drawn on the end of my plugs showing grain direction.   

guitarcookie1

Thanks all. 

I'm going to give ICBM's method a try first as I have wood glue & cocktail sticks to hand. 

speshul91

i have used that method before, 2 years on and its still fine.

octatonic

+1 for plug cutter method.