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This is something I never thought I'd do. Emphasis on the NEVER part of that statement. But I have a good friend who's grandfather played this guitar throughout his childhood. It has been "worked on" multiple times. And it is suffering from super high action.

So I have decided to help him on the grounds that he absolutely cannot complain about potential finish damage. He is fine with this and has given me the go ahead to repair the instrument.

Thankfully this is not one of the "paddle head" neck joints with the extra wood added on the extension.





Bridge has been cut down quite a bit. Projection is VERY low.


Check out those string ramps!


Our list of work is the usual neck reset with a new bridge to be made. This'll be fun because the heel on this thing is covered in finish. More to come tomorrow when the work begins....... fun.

These Pick guards are also a bit of an issue when heating the FB extension to remove it as well as getting a knife under it so depending on how solid it is and how crazed the finish is you may want to remove it first.

I use a hot knife to cut the lacquer at the heel joint and along the FB extension.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Being black in that area of the neck joint you will find it very forgiving and easy to hide any issues. I just use a can of Stew Mac black Nitro for touch ups like that.

Hopefully it will be a straight forward job.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Brian thank you for the advice on the pickguard. This one started to crack when I did a little test removal so I decided to leave it where it was. It seems to be overly stuck down, not sure why.

To cut the finish I decided to use Brian's hot knife technique as well as using some acetone to soften up the finish. The result was a decently clean cut that should clean up nicely when it's said and done.





And now the neck removal.
Holy o frick was this neck an absolute bear to get to get out! I used the usual steam method with low pressure and it still just refused to budge. The extension also had a small piece tear out that I was able to save and reglue. I didn't take any photos during the process and instead just focused on removing this thing.

The glue seemed like it was extremely water/heat resistant, I don't know if they had titebond II in the 70s but that's definitely what it reminded me of. The entire thing was slathered in the stuff on the sides and dovetail. It was some sort of white mystery glue and it was pretty strong.

Some pics after I removed the crap glue and cleaned up the surfaces. You can see where the tearout happened on the extension. I did the usual heat and remove thing it just didn't help much even going with the grain.






There is some steam finish damage right at the extension which is to be expected with how much it actually took to get this thing out. Also one of the flaws with this laminate neck design is that is will start delaminating if the glue gets too hot. You can see where the one piece started to delaminate on the dovetail and actually chipped off during the removal. We also see the production date of the guitar. 1976 a year of Norlin's reign of terror.

Cleaning this thing up and fitting back in will take a while. It seems like the neck was clamped very hard at the factory and as a result "wedged" the neck into the neck block? The geometry just does not mate up well. I may enlarge the neck block and shim it to fit the neck a little smoother so that a future removal won't be a fight with a bear.

Got the bridge off as well. The glue was exactly the same as the neck. I decided to avoid heat since it took so much to get the neck off. So my method was to plane the bridge down to a sliver, then knock it off carefully with a chisel, worked well and I had just the top layer of spruce pop off with the bridge giving me a decent glue surface with some scraping.





The bridge also had some sort of bizarre plastic insert around the pins? No idea what that was supposed to do.

More to come tomorrow. The worst is over though

Good going Dan, very nice work!

I like the leather pads you have on you parrot vice. Where'd you get those?

Thank you Hesh



I actually made those. They kind of only work on the "tall boy" version of the versa vise. They're essentially just thick leather flip flops. When I'm clamping plain wood or a bridge blank for sawing I just slip them off. When I want to clamp a neck or other sensitive piece I just slip them on and go for it. I need to make some that are tapered to match the sides of a fretboard to make restrings go faster.

Didn't get any pictures but got the neck cut and glued back in with hide glue over the weekend. I decided to do a little finish touchup as well, and like a moron I didn't get any pictures. My shop is busy so I'm only doing this one when I have a few minutes here and there.

One problem I was running into was that with the new angle cut there was a small line of exposed wood around the neck heel where the wood had been removed. What I didn't want to do was have an obvious unfinished line of wood around the heel even though I'm doing this to help my friend out. So to help hide the wood and make the finish touchup look nicer I took a sharpie and added a small line of "stain" inside the finish line to darken the wood just inside the edge where the bare wood of the sides meets the finish.
With the neck and without any other touchup on it's far less obvious that anything was done and with a little touch of black it'll blend alot nicer. I'm sure it's a bit redneck but it does the job well.

I'll put pics up of the finish work and the new bridge later this week.

The Sharpie trick works great for that. I use them a lot when I have to rebed a nut and don't want that fresh edge on the bottom edge of the nut slot to show.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

So... This one was finished and I didn't realize until after the owner left with the guitar that I got no pictures.

The finish on the neck was visible that it had been cut. But I did a little touchup work and it blended much nicer. I used hide glue on the neck so whomever removes this in the future will have a much more cooperative guitar on their hands.

The new bridge I ended up having to cut with a wider saddle a little over 1/8" wide in order to get the intonation correct. With the plastic insert gone in the bridge the response is much quicker and the overall tone is much stronger.

The bracing on this thing was the double X style so the tone was much more modern. But with an improved neck angle and a new bridge with better height and proper saddle height the tone even plugged in was much stronger. At the end of the day the owner was happy to have his grandfather's guitar back in playing condition and that's what matters.