Neck removal problem

[Rob Mercure]

Folks,

Wanting to learn to do neck resets I decided to practice on a "Washburn" (Samick?) D-10N that has been lying around for a few years. A true victim of overheated car this beast had the bridge pulled off - tearing off the first layer of plies as well as bellying extremely - while also loosening over 3/4 of the total bracing. Orignally I was going to reglue the bridge and braces for the friend who owned the guitar (only for a friend! ) but he decided to just abandon the guitar. So I decided to remove the neck and table doing the neck to practice and perhaps replace the table with a solid one (haven't decided on that).

So I scored the finish along the heel and along the edges of the fret board. I then masked off the table and fretboard and judiciously using a heat gun loosened the fretboard from the table without problem. I then removed the heel cap and drilled a small hole at 45 degrees into the dovetail joint and injected boiling water. This allowed me to get the neck/joint to loosen and wobble around but I couldn't get it to slide upward out of the joint. Was thinking about this later last night and remembered that the truss rod adjusement nut protruded slightly into the soundhole (ugly!) and is obviously preventing the neck heel from sliding out of the DT joint. So I removed the cylindrical nut - about 1.5" but it really didn't seem long enough to reach the DT joint so it would seem that the truss rod would interfere with the heel sliding no matter what.

Has anyone else experienced this and if so how did you deal with it? I hope that the only way to remove this neck isn't removal of the fretboard and then the truss rod. Will the truss rod flex and withdraw when the heel slide up now that I've removed the nut?

Like I stated this is a practice run and if the gutar winds up in parts there isn't that much loss. But I did want to practice removla/installation (did this once years ago on a Yamaha with the heel split and the neck loosened by an angry owner throwing the guitar - I found it in the trash) as well as assess the worth of replacing the table (may not be worth it but might also, I dunno, the whole thang is ply but the neck profile is good enough as well as the frets and machines - rest of the ply body is intact and not scarred up).

Any response is appreciated.

Rob

[Russell Vance]

Umm, now this is going to sound a little coarse - but, why not remove the fret board as an exercise and see how the whole thing went together - that is, if nobody else can offer a course of action. You may lose the instrument and it may end up contributing to global warming in the shop fireplace but I have gained a lot of insight by way of destructive disassembly of things that were destined for the dump anyway. Be a shame to die not knowing! Rusty.

[Rob Mercure]

Might wind up doing so eventually but for now I was considering reusing it and wanted to preserve the neck finish as much as possible - my experience from removing and reglueing fretboards is that it's hard to remove the FB w/o some finish boo boos. About 20 years ago I used to get $10 from a local music store to set up new Yamahas that came in - pretty lucrative as most need no work but some needed more. Then three or four showed up in row with bad truss rod threads already "pre-stripped" from the factory . I wound up removing the fret boards and replacing the truss rods sucesfully but spend far more time in refinishing than in repairs - finish work has never been one of my strong points as I'm more a "function" type feller. Didn't get back to the WB last night but will tonight so perhaps I'll get lucky and the truss rod end will slip though.

Rob

[Len Biglin]

Hi Rob , sometimes a truss rod will slip into the s/hole area , all it takes is for someone to drop it on it's butt.If that's the case just bop it with a punch or hunk of wood & hammer , it should slide back into the neck.Len

[William F.Eden]

Take Rusty's Advice and remove the fret board. Because you will likely find out in the end that the neck block was just drild for the trust rod and there is no way for it to come off,I always slot the top and the neck block so it is easy to remove the neck from the body. Good luck Bill.""""""""""

[Rob Mercure]

Well folks taking off the fret board wouldn't have solved the problem and just added another repair to restore any use. The neck wasn't held on by a dove tailed joint but instead by four more of less 3/8" dowels. These were placed two in the plane of the fret board and two across the width of the body - a "T" pattern. Once I got it to slide forward a little it was obvious and I could even stick a screwdriver in to pry without touching finished wood. The truss rod should have been a clue if I hadn't "ass-umed" - remember I noted that it seemed like it wanted to slide out toward the peghead? With the neck off the truss rod slid out as it was a square aluminum channel with the threaded rod working against it.

Once I got the neck off removing the table went very quickly using a heat gun with a mask and an old oyster knife which works well for these situations. The top was three ply - spruce, then spruce @ 90 degrees, and then a "mahogany" layer. The bracing was spruce and actually pretty good while the bridge backing plate was spruce.

Kinda strange that the construction was actually pretty good while the materials were low quality - the neck, FC, machines, and truss rod of good quality and well put together. While I still haven't made my mind up what to do with the parts the neck may be worth doing something with. But as far as neck setting practice I wanted to tackle a DT joint.

Ah well, thanks for all the suggestions.

Rob

[Mike Mancini]

Rob,

If you decide to put the guitar back together, here's what I did. My first try at a neck removal was on an Aria 12 string and I found the same neck joint...it was glued on with 5 wood dowels.

With nothing to lose, I decided to reset the neck angle, drill out the center dowel, and install a hangar bolt into the neck heel. The bolt helped to hold the neck onto the body when I reglued it using the remaining 4 dowels. It came out pretty good, although I made a rookie mistake in not scoring the neck joint before removal.

[Rob Mercure]

Mike.,this is more of less what I was thinking about if I reset the neck - bolting - but I had not though as far along and was actually condsidering replacing the dowels with some tempered aluminum alloy rods I salvaged from a mainframe computer to create an easy bolt on/off neck. But as I stated this was really just a resetting practice exercise - the guitar's neck didn't actually need to be reset but the table did need replacement if anything could be salvaged so the neck would have to be removed for that operation. Now I have to decide whether I want to really put any cash into making a new table although I might do another repair practice in the spirit of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and see if I can salvage the table from another junker - but other paying projects await so this goes back on hold.

Rob

[Colin Brown]

Hi Rob,

Now it's possible that I am being obtuse, but I'm not familiar with the term 'table'. However, I take it to mean the part of the top that the fingerboard is connected to. If that is the case, I'm having a hard time visualizing this in my head - replacing a part of the top that apparently has no structural damage?

[Rob Mercure]

"Table" and "top" are synonyms as is "top plate" - which in context might wind up as solely "plate." As best I know "table" is an older term that I got from violin makers. There are probably dozens of other descriptors of instrument parts.

Rob

[Colin Brown]

Right on, I wasn't trying to argue semantics with you. The connotation that I had of table was just the part of the top under the fingerboard, I guess I should have assumed that you meant the entire top, that would make more sense.
Thanks for the clarification