Post by CTGull on Jul 5, 2020 7:47:47 GMT -5
A local college kid was selling it on Craig’s List. He said he had it for years and didn’t play it anymore and was moving back home. No serious structural issues but filthy and needed a major cleaning and some careful TLC. This guitar has been played but not abused; a little neck wear, aging tuners and a few body scuffs.
The first 2 frets have some divots, 3rd thru 5th have minor divots, I measured the height of all the frets and the rest of the frets are between .027" & .030" high. Not terrible, I couldn't see replacing the first 2 frets and taking them down to the level of the low old frets, so he elected to wait on the complete refret.
Yesterday I removed the neck. I started with scoring the corners of the heel and fretboard.
Then removed the 15th fret and drilled the steam holes, using my new 3D printed drill jig.
And injected steam into the neck joint. Not without the usual fight, but it wasn't too bad, a 7 minute steam session (it was sort of loose but not ready), more cutting into the heel corner, and another 2 minutes of steam and the neck released.
BUT!! Some odd things happened. The joint must have been very tight and there was lots of hide glue. Some chunks of the neck dovetail stayed stuck to the neck pocket dovetail, far more than I've ever seen.
And, the bottom black purfling didn't separate from the body even though I had cut into it, it always separated with the steam. This caused a little damage to the black binding and side.
As usual, some of the top was stuck to the bottom of the fretboard, that was immediately removed (while it was still hot & wet) and glued & clamped back to the top.
Then I cut out most of the dovetail tear out and glued it back to the neck dovetail.
Here's the repaired top.
The first 2 frets have some divots, 3rd thru 5th have minor divots, I measured the height of all the frets and the rest of the frets are between .027" & .030" high. Not terrible, I couldn't see replacing the first 2 frets and taking them down to the level of the low old frets, so he elected to wait on the complete refret.
Yesterday I removed the neck. I started with scoring the corners of the heel and fretboard.
Then removed the 15th fret and drilled the steam holes, using my new 3D printed drill jig.
And injected steam into the neck joint. Not without the usual fight, but it wasn't too bad, a 7 minute steam session (it was sort of loose but not ready), more cutting into the heel corner, and another 2 minutes of steam and the neck released.
BUT!! Some odd things happened. The joint must have been very tight and there was lots of hide glue. Some chunks of the neck dovetail stayed stuck to the neck pocket dovetail, far more than I've ever seen.
And, the bottom black purfling didn't separate from the body even though I had cut into it, it always separated with the steam. This caused a little damage to the black binding and side.
As usual, some of the top was stuck to the bottom of the fretboard, that was immediately removed (while it was still hot & wet) and glued & clamped back to the top.
Then I cut out most of the dovetail tear out and glued it back to the neck dovetail.
Here's the repaired top.
