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I just assembled a steam needle, and to test it out I tried removing the fingerboard from the old Regal mandolin neck. I'm carving a new neck and installing a new fingerboard, so this was strictly for personal education.

I steamed it to the point of the wood starting to fall apart, and I made only minor headway in getting the fingerboard loose. I have concluded that somebody at some point re-glued the fingerboard with something other than hhg. For one thing, it doesn't dissolve in the steam, and the remains of it are sort of rubbery. The glue I encountered when removing the back was definitely hhg, but not this stuff.

Anyway...if the fingerboard HAD been glued with HHG, how readily would it have let go when I steamed it?

My daughter runs her own shop in Brooklyn and she recently removed a neck for me. She said that some will come out without steam - just a good wiggling - and mine was on the difficult side at 20 minutes to get it out.

Ed

I know a steam needle is needed to remove a neck, but an iron will remove a fretboard. I lay the iron directly on the fretboard and use 2 sharpened putty knives. As the glue softened, I made sure to keep a putty knife in place as a wedge, to keep the board from re-gluing itself. I use the iron dry, on the highest setting.

The steam needle works in the neck dovetail, because it's contained in a pocket, which holds the heat and moisture. With a fretboard, you have to lift the board as the glue softens; the steam is exposed to the ambient temp of the room, cools and condenses too quickly to water.

I've not encountered any glue, including Titebond that turns to a rubbery consistency. Perhaps someone used a cross-linked PVA glue, which requires dry heat since it's waterproof. A hairdryer set on high heat will soften it when you aim it directly on the dried PVA containing glue.