School's out! Back to work!

Vacation is here, and I am really, REALLY ready to get back to having fun with instruments!! I've missed working on this stuff for the last few months. I have been turning some pens on the lathe, but I really wanted to get back to the projects that have been laying around for several months.

First task for today - the Harmony H165. I've decided to go ahead, remove the back, and rebrace the guitar with x-bracing, having seen some excellent work at Harrison Phipp's place, Fretted Strings, here in Davis. The sound that he is able to coax out of a Harmony Sovereign is amazing, and I figure that, since this really is not a guitar of any value, and I need to take the back off anyways if I want to have any hope of correcting the giant side crack, I might as well learn something new! But I need to remove the neck first, and that is today's task.

Nathaniel seems ready to help.

My increasingly terrible-looking cardboard and aluminum foil shield in place. The heat lamp is about the right height to heat the wood, but not char it. This took about 20 minutes to heat through - pretty normal stuff. The fretboard is Brazilian Rosewood.

It's coming along. The blue tape is hiding a fret marker with some foil - I assume these markers are plastic, and would melt under the heat. I haven't managed to smoke one yet.

Once the fretboard extension was off, I realized that the bushing were barely in at all, and kept falling out. Some rubber bands will keep those in place.

I drilled my holes for the steam needle.

All set up in my torture device.

Mr. Steamy is ready.

A quick aside - what a stupid bridge. I mean, really, bolt-on? This is going to be removed as well.

The neck came off fine, of course I didn't take any pictures, I was too busy manhandling the guitar. There is an amazing amount of glue on the dovetail. The neck and head block are both poplar, soft, lousy wood for this kind of stuff.

All good, and that was enough for the day. I want to put a bit of thought into how to remove the back without damage. Or, I might just remove it and bind it after I put it back on - what the heck, I love a nice tortoisehell binding.


Then it was time for the Guild D30. I'm going ahead with the assumption that I will be replacing wood in this neck and returning it to service. I'm not convinced that it is the best option, but the best option (the exact same neck, fitting perfectly, is installed secretly by guitar gnomes overnight) doesn't seem likely. Even if this one doesn't work out, it is worth the effort.

Remember how I left lots of space for the Harmony neck? Screw that, I'm bringing the lamp way too close, and I don't care what starts to char. This is removal of a busted fingerboard, not preservation.

Sure enough, lots of oil starts pouring out of this fingerboard.

It was slow going at first. Hide glue really holds up to the heat.

But I'm making progress.

WHOOO DOGGIES!! We got smoke!

And suddenly - it popped off. I think that at the nut end, it was mostly held on by epoxy, which gave way instantly with a bit of heat. Epoxy is really awful for this kind of work.

In fact, the truss rod channel seems to have a lot of crusty crumbly epoxy in it. I decided to take a knife and chisel to it and see what was inside. First, I sanded the whole thing down a bit so that I could get an idea of what the truss rod channel filler strip looked like.

Oh !&%!@*. That truss rod is embedded in a friggin' LAKE of epoxy. That is not good. Not good at all. I somehow have to get that all out, so that I can get the truss rod out, so that I can saw off the bad part of the neck, so that I can put in new wood for the neck, so that I can... you get the idea. For the want of a nail...

I had to show this. I noticed a tiny bit of white protruding from the fretboard, and decided to see if it was really the side marker dot. Yep, the dot goes 3/8" into the side of the fretboard. I have NO IDEA why they would make a dot go so deep.

Okay, so I need to look into how to get that epoxy out of the channel before I can get the truss rod out. I might just end up sawing some of the waste wood away, then digging out the epoxy. I can then trim the neck up perfectly flat on the table saw. FUN!!!!