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Watching the varnish dry on my OLF Challenge mandolin was getting boring, so I decided this would be a good time to try my first neck removal project. First I made a Stew-Mac inspired jig from some bamboo flooring and stair tread scraps I'd rescued from a construction dumpster. I had some threaded rod, so I wandered down to my local hardware store and bought some wingnuts and washers, cork, rubber tubing (to cover the rods) and a length of fuel line. Clamped an inflation needle to one end of the fuel line and then just jammed the other end onto my wife's portable clothes steamer. Et voila! Total cost for the set up was maybe $8.00.

The first guitar I built didn't turn out very well, so I use it for all my practice runs. That went well, so I pulled out a neat old Guild of mine that is in desperate need of a neck set went at it in earnest. Bingo! Second time through was even easier than the first and the neck came out in a jiffy. There is one little section at the heel cap where the finish appears to have blushed a bit from the heat and/or moisture. All in all, not too bad and it was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I snapped these pics with my phone in the heat of the battle, so they aren't going to win any photography awards. Oh well...

George :-)

Cool stuff.

I've done one neck removal I just pulled the 15th fret.

Yeah, it needs a refret as well, so I went ahead and yanked them all!

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George :-)

Watching the varnish dry on my OLF Challenge mandolin was getting boring,

Ha! Kinda like watching glue dry,
but takes longer.
Slick process and jig!

cool! Nice salvage work, too!

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The thing I don't get about this method is how you know that drilling a hole in the 15th fret location is always going to line up with the joint in the dovetail. What do you do if you can't find the joint?

Pat

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those that watch things happen,
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Pat,
I've always asked myself the same thing. I guess it's just one of those lucky accidents that the foot of a typical tenon tends to line up with the first fret below the neck/body join. Anyway, I hit it both times and it was quite easy to detect when the drill bit entered the gap. (I used a Dremel). On the Guild in the pictures, I found small channels where the drill bit just skimmed the edge of the neck block. If for some reason you didn't manage to hit the gap, I suppose you could just remove the fingerboard and get at the joint that way.

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George :-)

George -

Very cool. Regarding that blush on the finish from the moisture, I had a similar situation and learned from folks on this forum that a very effective way of repairing it was to blow the affected area with a heat gun, very gently. The finish will go back to original transparency as it gets hotter (of course you have to be very careful about melting it. Keep testing with fingers to ensure that it doesnt get too hot. Worked really well.

Thanks, Corky! I'll give it a try.

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George :-)

Thought I'd revive this thread to thank everyone who chimed in to my various threads related to this neck reset. It turned out that the bridge and fingerboard had been shaved down so far that I had to replace them both to get this old guitar back up and running. Guild finished the guitar with the neck in place, so I had to deal with a bit of finish damage at the heel and where the fingerboard and neck were joined. That turned out okay. Not perfect, but the guitar already had some issues in those areas, so not a big deal to me. I never liked the extremely heavy replacement tuners someone had put on and when I found a set on eBay matching what had been on the guitar originally I went ahead and installed those as well. So, now we have a new bridge, saddle, fingerboard, frets, nut, proper tuners, and a corrected neck angle--a new lease on life! The main thing is playability and that is vastly improved, as is the intonation. All in all a pretty successful first effort at resetting a neck. I'm happy and I'll risk some anthropomorphizing by saying the guitar seems happier too. We're finally making music together and that's a wonderful thing.

Thanks again for your help,

George :-)

P.S. Crummy photo, but here's the guitar:

George: Nice job....! Think it's harder to be a good repair person then it is to be a builder. Repairs always present a new set of problems at every turn. Where as in building the construction preocess is generally stable. Take care.
Tom

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Although I agree with the point, I think it depends on what kind of builder you are. If, like me, you're mostly self-taught, there are many opportunities for both building AND repair, on each new build.........

I will now refret the guitar anytime it gets a neck reset where the fingerboard extension is glued down (not like Taylor where everything is solid and angles are determined by shims). This is because I've found that anytime you increase the neck angle to get good action, you end up with a good deal of drop off at the fingerboard extension. This then creates a hump at the body joint which makes it unplayable. So a refret would allow you to deal with that problem.

Also chances are any guitar that needs a neck reset also needs a refret.

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If the guitar needs a refret at the same time as a reset, at least you get to charge for a lot of the "clean up & touch up" that you have to do with a reset only.

It does help to know the particular mfgr's neck joint, but generally the 15th fret on a 14 fret to the body guitar is where you will drill, then probe with a wire to see it you fount the spot, and then angle the drill and drill again in the same hole to find it again. I've drilled in the middle between frets to find the spot. A matching piece of rosewood or ebony is almost undetectable in the drill hole.

I like to lay the body flat, so the condensate ends up at the bottom of the dovetail, rather than the face of the guitar.
A "steam trap" or some procedure to drain away the condensate so the joint only gets live steam is a good thing.

A good neck pull takes some practice, and is very satisfying when it goes smoothly.

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