I tired to find more by using the search here, but I can't seem to find what I am looking for. Can some of you guys please share how to make a simplistic heel for a stock CBG? I mean, I know I can cut something round out and add it to the stock, but I am thinking more of a heel that has some shape to it and not just a round one. Thanks for any advise on such. I am not necessarily looking for a heel that enters into the box, but one that just butts to it. I am looking for something I can easly do with minimal tools involved to shape and make.
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James, there's no point in adding a heel if it's just a cosmetic addition..ie simply butting up to the box where it enters the body, it will not add any strength to the neck or the neck to body joint. On conventional guitars the heel is needed to form a dovetail joint to the heel block, and on a banjo it's there to allow the dowel stick or co-ordinating rods/ lag bots to be fixed.
The point of putting a heel onto a cigar box guitar is to reinforce the neck or neckstick where it enters the body especially where it is potentially weakend by cutting the top of the neck to fit under the box or to take a magnetic pickup.
As for how to make it, simply glue a piece on and carve it to shape using whatever tools you have to hand..a saw to rough it out, chisel, rasp and coarse file to work it to shape and then sand by hand or belt sander to the final profile.
Here's a video of a guitar that I put a new neck into - you can see on the original neck it had a sort of heel glued on, but it really was very weak, and the builder hadn't quite understood where he strength needed to be for it to work properly - and I see this many times when re-working other maker's CBGs.
Good example of neck strength at the heel.