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I watch a few top repair videos recently where the finger board extension needed to be removed, and the repair guy cut the FB extension off at the body joint. This made me cringe, as I would be more inclined to remove the neck and FB, or steam off the FB. I guess while there should not be a lot of pressure on the extension, I still think having one continuous FB would give more support. I get that this may be needed on a guitar with a Spanish heel, but what do you think about this as a common practice for steel string guitars? It seems faster, but are there additional risks to this approach?

Thanks,
GS

With a bit of heat the entire fret board can be removed. If I could not fine a gap while trying to steam out a dovetail joint I might conciser cutting at the body join and removing the extension.

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It was a common practice many decades ago, like drilling holes in skulls to let out bad spirits. These days it is widely shunned and viewed as archaic, overly invasive, detracting from value, and contributing absolutely no value to the work or process in my opinion.


That said, every job can bring unique circumstances, and somewhere in the broad spectrum of confounds luthiers encounter there may exist a situation or two which may require this approach. For most jobs that require access to the full soundboard area or neck joint however (rare anomalies aside), with conventional steel string neck joints I see no reason or benefit to this approach.

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Back in the old days I did it too. After a few times doing that I decided it was better to saw through the 12th fret (assuming a 14 fret body joint). To put it another way, not the body joint fret. That way you would have some continuity across the body joint when you reglue the extension.

If you look at the SS Stewart thread I started here you will see that I removed the FB. It's not at all difficult especially if it was glued with hide glue but also in that thread I talked about the difficulty in removing that neck. In that case it would have been better for me to either remove the fretboard or saw through the 10th fret. The dovetail was not aligned perfectly to steam through holes drilled through the fretboard. IT finally came off but in hind sight this would have been a reasonable repair technique, to saw through a fret.

While it's not hard to remove a fretbaord it's a lot easier to leave it in place. So imho this technique still has merit on occasion. Another good example to use this technique is on cheap guitars like Yamaha's with the mystery glued in neck. Some times people are very sentimental and want their guitars fixed regardless of it's value. So again this technique would save them money and make the neck reset possible.

I removed this very part earlier today trying to do a Yamaha neck reset. Knowing it was epoxy I didn't bother trying heat, instead I used a thin putty knife with the edge ground so as to be a bit sharp. Slowly and carefully I worked it in at the ends of the fretboard and just kept working it around. Took a good 10-15 minutes but I finally got the entire section separated from the top. I did lose a tiny bit of top wood on one side, but not enough to compromise the top.

Wouldn't the angle of the extension be different than the rest of the finger board if left in place on a rest? In which can you'd have 2 separate planes? I would think that would cause a lot of other problems like for instance redoing the frets?

Jeff

Jeff, I have seen quite a few older instruments in which there is a pretty dramatic slope down after to body joint. I am not sure how big of a problem this is when there is no cutaway. Chet referred to that area of the finger board as "The dusty part.". My concern is over time as the neck is pulled will this flip from convex to concave and cause buzzing. I guess it is time for another reset when that happens. I am still a little uneasy about this, but can see where there are cases where it is needed. I like the idea of (when needed) cutting the FB a few frets before the body joint, so the cut is over a solid piece of neck vs. the body joint. Thanks everyone.

GS

You can still heat up epoxy to soften up the joint. It's not as easy but it's totally doable.

Yes, the so called fall away will be increased when you reset the neck. When you reset a neck, if you have not done so before, you may be surprised at how little material you need to remove to get the angle right. But sometimes its enough that you may want to shim the FB extension so the fall away is not so dramatic.

I like that by the way, 'The dusty part."

It's true, it is far less a thing to worry about unless there is a cut out.