Removing a back

[Phil]

Seems like lately the only things I manage to get done on guitars is screw them up. Thus I need to know how to remove a back from a guitar I just closed up.

Here's the story, closed the back on a rosewood L-00 I am building. It had a decorative center strip on the back. When I closed the box, the back shifted and put the strip out of alignment with the center of the guitar. My idea was to set up striaght edges, route out the strip and replace with a slightly wider strip to fix my mistake.

Problem #1 - Do notwork on guitars while on cold meds. This was the first problem. Problem #2 - do not use a Dremel and router base and forget to sufficiently tighten the router bit while using said cold medication otherwise you get the problem I got - the bit slipped and went through the back and the internal reinforcement strip.

So my first inclination is to give up guitar building entirely because lately I screw everything up. That's probably a drastic move and I guess in this hobby I have to expect to make a few mistakes as well as fix mistakes as well. Now that my temper has cooled down, the later is probably the attitude to have.

So in order to finish this guitar I guess I'll have to pull the back off and replace it. Any suggestions to make this go easily/smoothly?

[RnB]

You're not alone. I just did the same thing. My back was off at the end block & the heel. Not sure how it happened, but there it was. I couldn't leave it like that, so I ran inside grabbed a putty knife, my wife's iron & a wet towel & started steaming it off. Applying heat on the edges & slowly working my way around the perimeter. Within 10 or 15 mins, the back was removed. After cleaning up the residue w/ a chisel, I re-glued it on again the next morning & all was OK.

I had used Titebond to glue it on & it was a day after I had glued it up. Nothing worse than seeing the backstrip all cockeyed...

[tippie53]

if it isn't off too far you can move the heel spline by reshaping the neck
we all did this so if you make a mistake you learn not to do that again