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A while ago I recall a discussion on homemade and retail steamers used for neck removal but for the life of me can seem to locate the thread. As luck would have it, my first neck was slightly off and I need to remove it. Any suggestions?

One of our newer members, julyanwallis, has a 3 part series on youtube showing how he removes a neck.
First part:

Yeah, see them just recently.

I stumbled across this steamer last night. Thought it might make for a nice bench top steamer with some modification. Just need to figure out where I can pick one up around here.

His neck seemed to come off properly but I usually take out the first feet past the body joint (13th or 15th) to tap into the gap behind the dovetail. Maybe this was a different type joint and I guess in that instance you would need to have good knowledge of the guitar you are working on.

Winston_S wrote:A while ago I recall a discussion on homemade and retail steamers used for neck removal but for the life of me can seem to locate the thread. As luck would have it, my first neck was slightly off and I need to remove it. Any suggestions?

Ran across this today:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005SI ... 6ZPY06LT1N

Seems worth the $29.99 asking price.

-tommy

This is mine and i use pressure tubing and a stewmac steam tip.

I've always wondered if the steam cleaners actually put out hot steam or or something else. I don't have one so I can't say for sure.......but hot steam is dangerous so how many companies are going to make a consumer product putting out hot steam that children might use? True steam would have to have a temp of 212F or above so it would cause severe burns if not handled carefully and that would be a big liability for a cleaning product. Now consumers expect cooking/coffee makers etc. to be hot and dangerous but maybe not cleaning equipment.

It's funny that I just saw this post as I've been doing neck resets, but never owned my steam machine. There is a guy on ebay where I got the needle for 17 bucks plus shipping, and I got an expresso machine, new for 30 bucks. So 55 bucks shipped, is all I've got in it.

I just tested it today, had the machine going and tested the steam. Works great. The process I use, is removing the fingerboard extension, and removing the 15th fret and drilling a hole in the fret slot to fit the needle. Once holes drilled, you use a guitar string to be sure you found the gap between the body and dovetail, and then put the needle in and add steam. Keeping drilling until you hit the gap. (Clearly don't over do it, shouldn't take much to find the gap. Sometimes a couple tryings)

It might just be me, but I'm a little afraid of the idea of removing fingerboard up past 13th fret or so on the neck. The thing with removing the landing, is when the necks off you can easily get glue back into every bit of the surface there, and reglue it with out issues. The problem with going much further in the neck, is you'd then have to try to get glue down in that crevice, or leave it unglued. I've never had to go back further than the fingerboard extension, and I'll personally keep doing it that way.

-Dan

Not sure why one would want to go beyond the body/heel junction (12th or 14th fret).

Oh, I'm sorry Ben, I misunderstood.

I didn't watch the video, so I have no idea how they varied from you. I just took the 13th fret as a potentially past the body.

We're on the same page.

-Dan