Fixing my college beater

[nkwak]

I've had a "lawsuit" Takamine F360 for a number of years now and it's endured years in college, neglect and now tinkering. It was in need of a neck reset which I had "fixed" for $80, then when the bridge started to come up I tried a JLD Bridge Doctor which led to even more issues. Then I discovered a couple of broken braces so I decided that maybe I should try a DIY repair.

So I took the bridge (and a little of the top) off:




The bridge itself is a goner for a couple of reasons:


Then I reached in and found that the reason for the belly was actually a separated and partly split X brace. So I did a dry run of clamping down:






...but I also noted that the fingerboard was still dipping:


...which means a neck reset is still needed, but then I looked at the inside of the neck block and at the by-product of that $80 repair:




I take it that that ain't AR or hide glue, is it? If not, then I may something to plant my wife's flowers in! :o(

So do you all think it's time I built a rosewood/adi dread instead?

[Ben-Had]

It's ALWAYS time for an Adi/Rosewood dred!!

How much off is the neck angle? I put a slight drop-off on my tongues that looks to but a lot though, what's it measure? I love to try to fix those.

[nkwak]

I went over to my friend's shop to restart work on my build but at the end of the night I decided to show him what I'd done with the Tak. I don't know if it was the beer or the lateness of the hour but we did some meatball surgery last night - and the prognosis for the patient is not too good! :(

First, we prepped the patient for surgery:

You can't really see, but I'd already taken a sharpened spatula and broke the glue joint beneath the fingerboard extension. Sure, I did crack the finish in places but by and large I got the fingerboard free of the top without major damage...

Then with the help of a a fret extractor thingie and a drill press we made the first incision:

Rosewood smells so good when you grind into it. :freak:

Now it was really time to put the patient under. Time for the laughing gas... well, actually some steam from a cappuccino machine he got of the local Craig's List:


You see where this is going; time to inject the steam directly to the neck joint:


The plan from that point was to loosen the joint and use a jig to pop the neck free of the body. It turns out however that that mess inside was neither AR glue (aka Titebond) or CA glue (aka Super Glue.) It clearly wasn't hide glue - we'd have smelled that once steam was applied - but it was something else that did not react to steam.

So we pulled the patient out of the jig, got a fretting hammer and started just whacking away at the heel cap. Well, by that point things were already turning ugly.


I think the guy who repaired it last actually used epoxy which means that if this neck is coming off I'm going to have to saw it off and bolt it back on.

I don't know what I'm agonna do at this point. Maybe scrap it and chalk it up to experience or further dissect it and see if there's anything I can save and integrate into a new dread build? If this guitar is indeed a loss I think that'd be cool to do.

[Tony_in_NYC]

Epoxy? That stinks. Best of luck with getting the neck off. Could be tough.

[Darryl Young]

I'm unsure how to get the heat inside the mortise (or dovetail) but epoxy should release with heat. Now if it's possible to get enough heat in the right place for long enough time, I don't know. Could you put a heat blanket inside on the neck block? Might loosen the neck block.......but you don't have a lot to loose so might be worth a try.

Usually steam is injected under the 15th (or maybe 16th) fret. Why did you use the 14th fret? It might work better if you tried pulling one of these frets and drilling into the gap between the bottom of the tenon and the mortise (or bottom of the dovetail) and injecting steam there.

[Ben-Had]

15th Fret. 14th goes directly into the neck block.

[tippie53]

you don't have the hole in the right spot as Darryl points out. Try pulling the 15th frets and you may angle the drill bit one way or the other to find the gap.

[nkwak]

14th fret was user error I guess. We'll try again at the 15th fret. The heel cap and about 1" of the heel are toast though. User error yet again. :(

[nkwak]

OK, here's another question: we were applying steam into the dovetail itself then, weren't we? How much damage do you think we did? I'd just like to have an idea before being shocked with the actual results! :^D

[Ben-Had]

Hard to say. I went into a joint once believing it was a dovetail turned out to be doweled got it off dried it out and reset and attached. Had a Gibson that I couldn't find the gap on, turned out there was about zero to begin with, half the dovetail stayed behind and I had to steam it off and re-glue the broken parts back to reform the dovetail. So I guess I'm saying get it off and see what you have. Did you score the finish around the heel to help it break away?