fingerboard leveling

[Gregory Hites]

Greetings,  I've got a 1962 Gibson Les Paul Custom (3 pickup SG style body) in my shop for some major repair work including a refret. 

 

It came in with a neck backbow.  I loosened the truss rod completely with the strings at pitch, and the neck straightened but with no relief.  I've removed the frets, and with the truss rod nut completely loose the neck is fairly straight, but still no up-bow.

 

My thought is to tighten the truss rod nut about 1/4 turn then remove a sufficient amount of fingerboard in the upper register to level the fingerboard, so that when the new frets are installed and it's strung up to pitch I'll have a little room to back off the truss rod if I need to add relief.  (Doing this I may need to remove some of the block inlays first and reinstall after leveling?)

 

Any thoughts on this procedure?

 

Be blessed,

littleguitargreg

 

 

[Gregory Hites]

Pierre, That's called a bench "Dog" that I made

. Very handy for working on both sides of the neck, or for clamping. Does not rotate. Hard mounted to the corner of the bench with a platform on the floor and two shelves between it and the bench.

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Thanks for the informations Gregory.

[nathan clark]

Gregory,

Is the humidity part of the convex neck problem? Is your shop climate (including humidity) controlled?

Nate

[Gregory Hites]

No Nate, Humidity is not the problem in the shop. Who knows what Mr. Customer did, but it'll be all better when I'm done with it.

Greg