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Hi folks, I have a question about my first build that I hope you can offer some advice on. When I was putting in my truss rod before I glued down the fret board I think I miscalculated slightly as I have about 1/8" of the brass nut that would protrude under the string nut(I don't know what you call it, it's the portion that the threaded rods terminate in).

Also when I glued down the fret board I used liquid hide glue and I don't think I got enough on the neck near the nut. What happened is when I went to flatten the neck to level my frets the glue joint broke on one side. I've had the guitar strung up and it's flat with string tension on it, but has a bit of a back bow when it's off the body. My question is, do I have to take the fretboard off and clean it up, glue it back down or can I thin down some epoxy (or other glue) and force it into the gap?

I'm okay with either one, just thought I'd ask in case I'm going to more trouble than I need to. I will post pictures later.

Thanks!

If it were mine, I'd remove the fretboard and clean up then reglue. If you plan to keep it forever as your own, it may be worth it to try to work some glue into it and clamp it good. You'll never be sure how long it will last.

If you mean that when you adjusted the truss rod, the fingerboard started pulling away from the neck then yes, I would pull the board and install it again.

Yeah I know I'm going to have this one forever, it's my first guitar. The question to me is really whether I can get a solid glue joint trying to squeeze it in, and then whether I can live with knowing I took a shortcut on fixing a mistake. I think with how much I've agonized over every detail so far, I would probably be better off pulling it and starting over. I just wanted to know whether I was really doing a lot more work for little difference to the joint itself.


Exactly what I meant, I was rushing to post and wasn't as clear as I could have been. So of course since this is my first build and I'm not a guitar tech, is there anything I should know about pulling the fret board? I'm planning on running an iron onto it and will probably use a frosting spatula to help separate it. I've read that you should place wedges in as you lift it off to keep it from sticking back together and will do that. After I get it apart I'll probably scrape it clean and put it back. Do I have to be all the way down to new wood to get a good joint? I know from rehabbing furniture that re-gluing onto existing wood glue is a bad idea and you really want to get down to actual wood. Is it the same with hide glue?

Also, I'm pretty sure I know why I didn't get the right amount of glue down when I originally stuck it. I was using the Franklin liquid hide glue, and it was back in November I think. It was getting pretty cold in the shop overnight and when I went to run my bead it just wasn't flowing. I'm thinking that it would flow a little better if I heated it up a little bit, and I'm thinking about putting it in a container of warm water before I use it. Not boiling or anything, just to get it loosened up. Out of curiosity what are people's feelings about the liquid hide glue? Is it okay for me to use this or should I really look into getting the pelletized stuff? I'm only making electrics right now and most of the glue joints will be titebond I, it's really only the fret board that's getting the hide.


Thanks for the advice

I would scrape/sand all of the old glue off. Take your time and the method that you described should work perfectly to remove the fingerboard. Check the expiration date on your glue. Franklin liquid hide glue doesn't have a long shelf life. If you've been waiting to try hot hide glue, now's a great time. I use it every time I glue a fingerboard because it grabs fast.

Sounds good, I think I'll give it a try. Anything I should know about as far as different types or additives? I've read that you add urea to slow down the gelling process, can I just pee in it?

I think I'm going to go cheap and try a Rival Hot Pot modified to heat the glue, (cheap is a good price) do you recommend using a brush or a stick or what? How long is the open time and how well does it sand? Will binding tape suffice for clamping? I've already carved my neck so I guess I don't have a choice.

Lastly, thanks for the advice John and welcome to the forum. I'm new here too but also very new to guitar building, I hope all of my questions haven't put you off!

The buzz on the acoustic side of the forum is liquid hide glue in a bottle isn't any good.
I'd remove it, clean up the residue, and use titebond 1.
Or, whatever glue you are comfortable with.
Some say epoxy is better for glueing a fretboard on,
but I've never had a problem with TB 1.

I've used titebond 1 for years, but I've never tried to heat it up and loosen up a glue joint. Will it loosen up like hide glue will? This is really the only reason I used hide glue here although the clamping action of hide glue is intriguing to me. Maybe I should stick with what I know this time and pick up the stuff to do hot hide so I can play around with it before my project depends on it.

I suspected that the stuff in the bottle was not as good, it just seemed too easy.

I have always just used it as it comes. If you want to pee in it, go ahead

Never had a glue pot because I never use that much glue. I mix it up, stick it in the fridge and tear off a hunk, plop it in a little cup. Nuke a beaker of water in the microwave to about 165F and float the little cup in the water until it melts (ala Frank Ford). I use an acid brush. Get the shop good and warm, use a hair drier on the finger board and the neck. Open time is nearly nothing and that's good. I use clamps and cauls on both the fingerboard and the back of the neck. I do not believe that tape will provide enough pressure but I can not say for certain because I have never tried. Sands/scrapes very easily after it has cured.

Dry fit everything first, have all of your clamps and cauls ready to go and I think that you will be happy with the results.

Thanks for the welcome and I'm happy to help.

As an aside, I've used liquid hide glue on several guitars that I have seen on a regular basis for fifteen years or so and they are holding up just fine. Just beware of the date on the bottle.

Aside, aside...perhaps I am beside myself...

Tite bond is a great glue and it will without a doubt come apart with heat. Glue a couple of scraps together and sit them out on the asphalt in the sun on a hot day if you don't believe me...

Epoxy is great for gluing things together as long as you never, ever need to take them apart again. Epoxy your fingerboard on and if you ever need to remove it, you'll need a router and a sled or something else that will turn the entire fingerboard to dust.

I don't want to sound like I'm preaching (not yet anyway, I'm pretty new around here) but, if you use hot hide glue for the fingerboard, and it's not quite right, you can heat it to soften the glue and re-glue the board with the glue that is already in the joint. For fingerboards and bridges, I'm a big fan of hot hide glue. In case you couldn't tell.

Yeah I think epoxy's off the table though I have read that it too will break down with heat, (not sure if that means it has to be set on fire). I've never used the hide glue but I've read that it actually clamps itself somewhat. I've heard that's one reason why it works so well for violin bodies and doing repair work. You can spread it on, I think press fit it and it will develop "strings" in the glue that will pull the pieces together so it makes violin repair possible on areas that would be impossible to clamp. I don't think I need that quality for what I'm doing, but it's interesting if it's true.

I've used tite bond, liquid hide and hot hide glue to install fingerboards and they are all still on there. What ever you decide should work just fine. Just take your time removing the board. That knife can easily wander from the glue line and start chopping into the wood. I used a heat gun to take off a fingerboard once and it went well so, you should be okay. Just get the feel for the knife in the glue so that you can tell when the knife is in the wood.

Almost everything I do is repair so, I try to take every advantage of every situation that I can.

I do not mean that anything that I have said is the "right" way to do it but, it has worked well for me.

Have fun That's the most important part.

I wouldn't recommend a fingerboard for your first hot hide glue experience. I've done 4 now, and have yet to do a completely satisfactory job. It gels so quickly when spread over a large area like that, and the fingerboard slides all over the place while you try to get it clamped.

As for hide glue's self-clamping ability, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it on such a large area, although there is a chance it would work. I do use rub joints regularly on other things, and my feeling is that it works best when gluing a medium sized thing onto a larger surface, where the glue squeeze-out pools around the edge, gels so it can't suck back into the joint, and creates a suction clamping effect as it shrinks from drying. You do want to clean up the gelled squeeze-out before it dries very much, though. The joint seems to hold itself together just fine by that point. I've glued bridges on acoustics that way, which are of course subjected to high stress, so it definitely works. The only failures have been on ones where I did use clamps, but didn't have a perfect fit.

Oh, and hide glue will stick to itself, so you don't have to be obsessive about scraping back to wood. Of course, you always want a thin glue line, so if there's any more than a micro film of dried glue on the surface, you should clean it off. I usually clean away the glue with water, let it dry, and then lightly scrape to freshen it up and clean off any contaminants.

John, one other thing I would recommend is that you put indexing pins in the fb before pulling it. This way, you can get it aligned in the exact same place when you re-glue it. Pull a fret near the nut and one near the body, then drill a couple of very small holes through the fb and into the neck (miss the truss rod). Insert skinny nails that fits. Remove the nails, then remove the fb. Put them back in when re-clamping.

Iv'e read that if the fretboard is an oily wood, it should be wiped with a solvent prior to gluing.

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Dennis, I wasn't thinking of gluing it without at least taping it down, I was really more curious about that quality of the glue. I'll be using binding tape at the very least but probably set up some clamping cauls to do it the right way.

Glen, I was going to do this for sure everything's already been shaped and sanded. I'll probably use a 3/64" bit or smaller and some 18 gauge pin nails.

Dan, I'm using ziricote and I don't know if that's considered oily or not. I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Can anyone chime in on this?

well I went after it today, decided to pull it. My tools of choice were a travel iron that I got at target for $9 and my wife's 1", offset handle, frosting spatula. I set the iron directly on the frets near the headstock, at a medium, medium-high setting and checked it with my hands a couple of times. In this pic you can also see how the brass block of my double action, truss rod was sticking out under where the nut would be, (I know but it's my first guitar!)


Once it felt fairly warm, I tried sliding the spatula under and voila, I was down to the third fret before I knew it. As I worked my way down I threw in some pieces of scrap that I had from my recent attempts at wrapping the guitar with figured maple. I'd say getting the glue to loosen up really wasn't that hard but it's good to take your time and not force it. I didn't have a problem gouging into the wood at all, but that might have been due to something else that I discovered once the fret board was completely loose. I should have taken some action shots but I was concentrating on not wrecking my neck, lol.



There was plenty of glue on the maple but there was barely any on the ziricote. I don't know if this is an artifact of the removal process, but I have the feeling I should have wiped down the fret board before I glued it up the first time. I didn't make the same mistake today. I scraped 90% of the glue off and ran over the rest with my orbital. The part that took the longest was elongating the truss rod slot so I could get it to move towards the heel and get that brass block in the right place. I had a 1/4" chisel but my truss rod slot is just under that so it took some finagling to get a 1/4" chunk of wood out of the fillet at the heel. It also took awhile to clean out the silicone that was left from the first glue up. After I cleaned it out, I realized I didn't have any caulk or silicone but what I did have was some NAPA gasket sealant, the make your own gasket type stuff. After that I turned to cleaning the back of the Ziricote, and wouldn't you know it all I had was some NAPA brake cleaner. I sprayed a rag with some of it and wiped it down, and I'm pretty sure no oil would have survived that encounter. Ran some 3/4" tape over the trussrod, put down some titebond I and then pulled the tape, put some pin nails in my reference holes and set it on.



Here's a shot of a pin nail I stuck in a 1/32" hole to align the fret board back to the neck, I drilled into the darkest wood I could find, it was either that or one of the flecks and I figure I'll have an easier time touching up the black as the years go by.


Using a combo of binding tape, some rubber bands and a couple clamps I had it clamped and gluing up in no time. I used a clamp in the center to just bring the neck to level as the glue dried.



Left it for an hour, pulled the tape and bands and scraped it clean. This was a good day in the shop for me, things went pretty smooth. I've been a little discouraged lately as my shop days haven't been very productive. The real problem is my shop is not at my house and I really only have time on the weekends to get down there. It's quite a drive and it's frustrating going all that way and feeling like I haven't gotten anything done. Anyways, like I said today was a good day. Things went just as they should, no big mistakes as far as I can tell and I'm feeling much better about my guitar now. Thanks to all of you who said I should pull it, I know I'm going to be much happier in the long run and it was a valuable experience.

Glad you're getting it sorted out however, I would have used a lot more clamps.

I'm not too worried about it, I've been using masking tape to clamp miters together for years on cabinets and none of them have fallen apart yet. I got squeeze out down the whole length of the joint on both sides so I'm plenty confident in it. I actually adjusted the truss rod today and it adjusted much better and is holding fine.

Nice. Again, I'm glad that you're getting it worked out. Nice looking neck by the way...

Thanks