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Re: Extreme acoustic guitar surgery - watch me destroy a beloved instrument!
There's actually a slight groove at the heel of the fretboard in the finish that feels like it will hold the fretboard in place even with glue, and I can put the nut back into the groove so I've got something at the headstock to check as well. I was sanding all the remaining glue off the fretboard and neck last night and then did some dry fitting. You can feel this groove when you're in the right place sliding the board over the neck and I think that between the groove and feeling the edges of the fretboard/neck this should be enough to get good positioning. I'll probably keep a couple zip ties at hand too in case they're necessary.
As far as clamping goes, I found a pretty straight strip of wood (about 1x2) that'll cover about 80% of the fretboard in the garage last night. My plan is to put a few layers of shop rags beneath it as padding and then very lightly clamp that to the part of the fretboad nearest the nut. This should leave the very edges of the fretboard free and give me lots of room to slide things around and adjust if they're a little out of place, as well as wipe off excess glue as it squeezes out. Then I'll probably use a seperate stubby bit of 2x4 to clamp the last little bit of the fretboard next to the sound hole.
I couldn't find too many youtube videos, but this one seems to show exactly what I want to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbz_SZAbrw&t=1041s - at about 5:00 he shows the two pieces of 2x4 that he's clamping down on, and then he does the actual clamping after gluing at about 11:14. (He has some fancy bits of leather to use as padding over the frets, but I'll have to make do with shop towels or rags or something. Fortunately the frets on this acoustic are pretty small so I don't think it's going to put weird pressure on anything doing this). He's using the blocks to put some backbow on the neck, which I won't have to do, my guitars neck is pretty straight so I think just one straight piece to clamp will work better for me.
One thing that playing new acoustics at the guitar shop really drove home for me is that the frets on mine acoustic are pretty bad. They've been dressed a bunch of times, and were pretty small when they were new. Depending on how well the fret board gluing goes, I might try my hand at a fret job. (I've got three guitars and a mandolin that are borderline unplayable because of the state of the frets right now, and one guitar that is playable but has very deep grooves on the first 12 frets under the G B and e strings. It's something I need to learn how to do sooner or later . . . and I've been contemplating it for years now but haven't worked up the courage.)
We'll see how morale is after the gluing.
Also, I had a giant stockpile of Dean Markley Alchemy acoustic strings that I liked but am all out . . . and they seem to no longer be made. ****. That's annoying. I preferred them to Elixirs. Any chance that anyone knows of similar sounding strings that last a long time?
:P
There's actually a slight groove at the heel of the fretboard in the finish that feels like it will hold the fretboard in place even with glue, and I can put the nut back into the groove so I've got something at the headstock to check as well. I was sanding all the remaining glue off the fretboard and neck last night and then did some dry fitting. You can feel this groove when you're in the right place sliding the board over the neck and I think that between the groove and feeling the edges of the fretboard/neck this should be enough to get good positioning. I'll probably keep a couple zip ties at hand too in case they're necessary.
As far as clamping goes, I found a pretty straight strip of wood (about 1x2) that'll cover about 80% of the fretboard in the garage last night. My plan is to put a few layers of shop rags beneath it as padding and then very lightly clamp that to the part of the fretboad nearest the nut. This should leave the very edges of the fretboard free and give me lots of room to slide things around and adjust if they're a little out of place, as well as wipe off excess glue as it squeezes out. Then I'll probably use a seperate stubby bit of 2x4 to clamp the last little bit of the fretboard next to the sound hole.
I couldn't find too many youtube videos, but this one seems to show exactly what I want to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbz_SZAbrw&t=1041s - at about 5:00 he shows the two pieces of 2x4 that he's clamping down on, and then he does the actual clamping after gluing at about 11:14. (He has some fancy bits of leather to use as padding over the frets, but I'll have to make do with shop towels or rags or something. Fortunately the frets on this acoustic are pretty small so I don't think it's going to put weird pressure on anything doing this). He's using the blocks to put some backbow on the neck, which I won't have to do, my guitars neck is pretty straight so I think just one straight piece to clamp will work better for me.
One thing that playing new acoustics at the guitar shop really drove home for me is that the frets on mine acoustic are pretty bad. They've been dressed a bunch of times, and were pretty small when they were new. Depending on how well the fret board gluing goes, I might try my hand at a fret job. (I've got three guitars and a mandolin that are borderline unplayable because of the state of the frets right now, and one guitar that is playable but has very deep grooves on the first 12 frets under the G B and e strings. It's something I need to learn how to do sooner or later . . . and I've been contemplating it for years now but haven't worked up the courage.)
We'll see how morale is after the gluing.
Also, I had a giant stockpile of Dean Markley Alchemy acoustic strings that I liked but am all out . . . and they seem to no longer be made. ****. That's annoying. I preferred them to Elixirs. Any chance that anyone knows of similar sounding strings that last a long time?
:P
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