Well, I had hoped to do this yesterday. But yesterday became today. Anyroad, I did get around to removing the rest of the fretboard. And, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, what a pig’s ear…
The surrounding pictures attest to the carnage: first, the fretboard wood simply refused to separate cleanly from the neck. Second, despite trying to use the chisel co-planar to the joint, it occasionally dug in and gouged out neck material. Third, the section which is ‘flying’ our above the arched top, that whole came away and took the substrate – aka the neck – with it. And fourth, in several places whole chunks of neck ‘flesh’ came away. It’s become a kind of leprous zombie type neck, shedding material hither and yon.
One area where the latter occurred is around the locator pin-hole for the scratch plate. I can understand that that hole weakens wood around it. But why the chunks on the top of the neck?
I think what I’m going to have to do is take the entire neck down a tad, one way or another, whilst ensuring it remains both flat and ‘true’. Then I can add a laminate layer.I’m thinking a nice pale bear white wood, maple, perhaps?
Then I can rout out a channel and set the truss rod in place (adjustable end at the headstock), and finally fit a new 22-fret fingerboard.
