How long do you spend on a neck reset?

[Eric Gleason]

I'm wondering how long others spend resetting a neck on a guitar like a Martin with a standard dovetail joint.  I'm spending *much* longer than I'd like to, and wondering if my process is too slow or if everyone is like this.

[Mike Kolb]

Guilty. I spend a long time, too ...mostly because I really don't want to screw it up!   Sure, there's the "built-in" waiting of letting the dovetail areas thoroughly dry after steaming, but I'll also take forever to measure and line-up the neck angle a hundred times before committing! 

Another time-consumer for me is consciously deciding to limit the use of chisels and "sneaking up" on the targeted amount of neck-material to be removed with sandpaper "pulls" and files for the whole process.  Definitely slower but it seems to give more control and be less prone to overshooting.

Hard to say how much actual clock-time I put in, but will usually tell a customer "two weeks" to give the job a wide cushion.

[Eric Gleason]

I invariably wind up spending at least two full days of shop time, and more if there are finish touch ups to do.  When I first started doing resets, I figured it was no big deal and that I'd get faster.  I am not getting faster.

[Roger Häggström]

Most of the time not long enough... It's a roll of the dice in any restoration or repair, you will need some luck even with the best of plans.

[Taffy Evans]

Hi, as all reset jobs are different I give a customer a couple of estimates between my quickest and the painful longest. My longest involved a lot of structural work on the neck and upper bout. The easiest is normally due to bad manufacturer fitting of the neck in the first place.
Merry Christmas Taff.