Repairing a syrian oud, neck fixing

Hi everybody,

I am currently teaching myself how to repair musical instruments (i did few repairs on electric guitars), i got a oud from syria ,nothing special, however really nice bowl made of beech and walnut,

It had however one issue which is the neck connection to the bowl was broken was loose, it was fixed using one 13 mm dowel (the hole was a bit larger so think this where the problem lied), i have decided to make a dovetail joint like many oud builders are doing now

However i wanted to try and fix it in the same way electric guitar neck are fixed but somehow inverted: meaning installing a 2 mm metal plate above the joint and then screw it down to the neck block

any ideas or recommendations?

Cheers and thanks in advance

I am restoring a Syrian Oud now, had just disassembled its neck. from what i saw, although they do not like to put metals inside the oud body, I found that the connection mechanism is done by a long metal screw.
Attached is a picture of this neck.
Hope it can benefit you in your design.

20210405_032725 by Priapus_D, on Flickr

20210709_013804 by Priapus_D, on Flickr

Hi Naf,

I ended up with changing the neck design as it used to be like it is on the pictures you shared, i added a beech block that resembles a dovetail and connected to the neck through 2 steel rods and one screw, and accordingly cut ans chiseled the neck block to account for it, now for the connection between the neck itself and the neck block i glued the together and added a plate as shown in the picture in my first post. I think such a design allows to distribute the stresses along the whole block rather than risking stress accumulating at the face of block (see pic n 2).

I discovered recently that one maker in Egypt is using a 'tongue' design meaning that he is cutting the connection beween block and neck a trapezoid with the smaller side from top and replicating the shape on the block pic 3, and a very famous maker in lebanon is doing a dovetail + drilling and inserting a dowel vertically which is also smart )

I saw the rosettes you were doing they look very nice )

pic1 by Alaa Farhat, sur Flickr

pic1 by Alaa Farhat, sur Flickr

pic3 by Alaa Farhat, sur Flickr