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  • Taffy Evans June 28, 2016 at 7:43pm

    306564105?profile=original306564999?profile=originalHi Tom, here's what I did recently. I had the luxury of a bandsaw to do the job.

    Cheers Taff

    • Tom T > Taffy Evans June 28, 2016 at 8:00pm

      Nice removal and good use of the heel. It also shows the "V" slot that has to be un-glued to remove the neck from the body. As can be seen, it is not a simple job to get enough moisture into this joint to soften the glue. I guess guitar techs get upwards of $600 for a neck removal and reset. Now I know why.

      • Taffy Evans > Tom T June 28, 2016 at 8:27pm

        The hole through the fingerboard and pumping in steam method works if you know where the dovetail joint is. Not all manufactures use the same methods or size of dovetail to fit their necks. I have just removed a Gibson neck and its completely different to the one in that pic. 

        Taff

        • Tom T > Taffy Evans June 28, 2016 at 8:47pm

          I figured that only high-end guitars that were well documented qualified for such a complex procedure. Point being the shape of the joint on a particular guitar would be know to those qualified to do the work.

          You must know a good bit if you removed the neck from a Gibson. How did you proceed with the removal. We all could benefit from the knowledge.

          Thanks

          • Taffy Evans > Tom T July 17, 2016 at 7:38pm

            Hi, not all completely the case Tom. Some owners guitars mean a lot to them and will pay for high priced repairs on a relatively low priced/old guitar, mainly for sentimental reasons. In these situations one could find a regular dovetail of varying sizes, a plain tenon joint, a tenon joint with dowels down the sides of the  of the glue line as a key, Butt joint with dowels, concealed screws, and even nails added as reinforcement. I believe Stradivari used nails at one time.

            Mentioned above was to remove the fret at the body joint 14 fret, the one to remove is the fret that sits over the end of the dovetail. When steaming keep in mind that other areas close by, like sides and neck block, may also be unintentionally loosened.

            It's what keeps the job interesting Taff

  • Ron "Oily" Sprague June 28, 2016 at 12:13pm
    You may also want to look through the soundhole to see if the neck is screwed into the neck block with two screws or bolts. If so, your job will be much easier.
    • Jesse Lively > Ron "Oily" Sprague June 28, 2016 at 1:34pm

      I just looked for those now, no such luck, haha.

  • Tom T June 28, 2016 at 10:06am

    How you approach it depends to a great extent on your desire to save the body. If you don't care about the body, then you can just cut it away.

    If you want to "remove" the neck from the body, then you should check YouTube for "Acoustic Guitar Neck Reset".

    Removing a glued in neck so that the neck angle can be reset is fairly advanced stuff, buy you should be able to use the same technique to release the glue and remove the neck.

    Basically, it involves removing the fret closest to the neck/body joint, then drilling a small hole through the fret board so you can use a small tube/needle to feed moisture (preferably steam into the area of the neck/body joint. The glue is usually a reversible type such as hide glue and the moisture will soften it. Takes some time and patience, but it is doable.

    • Mark > Tom T July 12, 2016 at 1:46pm

      If you want to use steam that is all you want put in there it's the heat that softens the glue.

      • JL > Mark July 13, 2016 at 10:41am

        I watched a youtube on removing glued on bridges and fingerboards, the lutier masked off the rest with towels and aluminum foil and used a heat lamp to warm up the parts of interest.

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