Service for Telecasters

Work in the studio is varied. Here is some work on a telecaster where the original neck is being replacing with a beautiful bird's eye maple neck. Trouble is the predrilled neck holes don't match the holes in the body.

Here's the procedure. Fill the body holes with maple plugs. Easy right. Dowels must be honed to the correct diameter. Chucking up the dowel in a drill press and sanding it till it is .170" does the trick.
glue and fill then train the excess to complete the task.

Transfer the neck hole pattern to the body. Some left over .170" dowels were temporarily place in the the neck holes. Set some carbon paper (remember carbon paper?) in the neck pocket of the body and fixe the neck to the body. Be sure to make sure the center line is valid.

Drill the new .170" holes in the body. Make sure it's all squared up and drill.

Wax up the screws and use your PopEye like forearms to mount the neck to the body.

There it is. Sounds easy and for the most part it is. Precision is the key to doing it once.