Scary Neck Repairs: A Roscoe

[Bruce Johnson]

Hey Bruce,
thanks for documenting the repair so well, as always.

I do have to ask, why not just remove the whole fingerboard in 1 piece?
Seems like so much work to remove all the inlays and all of that effort.

It's very possible using a clothing iron and some careful use of a thick putty knife.
I've done it successfully several times over the years.

That said the end product is awesome, great job.
After all, that is what matters. I'm sure the customer will be thrilled.
Dirk

p.s. I will never understand why people have such a challenge adjusting and then stripping out truss rods.

Hey Dirk;

When I need to remove the fingerboard on one of the Scary Neck Repairs jobs, I generally prefer to rout it off and replace it with a new one, rather than remove it with heat and a knife. For several reasons. Since I have the machines and fixtures, it generally takes less time overall to rout off the old one and recut a new one, as compared to removing the old one with heat, and then having to clean up both surfaces so that they will glue back together straight.

Most electric bass fingerboards are thin enough that they break apart or curl up badly when removed by heat, and can't practically be re-used. I've removed and reglued fingerboards successfully a few times. But, most times it wasn't worth the trouble.

Also, on most of these repairs, the neck is here because it has some amount of bow or twist. Which is why the truss rod got broken. If the bow/twist isn't too bad, I can correct it mechanically as part of the job of replacing the fingerboard. I rout off the old fingerboard making a true flat surface, leaving a few thin areas of the old fingerboard on there as necessary. Then glue on the new fingerboard blank and cut its surface straight and flat. The idea is to remove the bow/twist by machining it out, rather than try to bend it back. If the bow/twist is more severe, I'll use heat straightening to correct most of it, then do the mechanical cut of the new fingerboard to get it fully true.

On this Roscoe, yeah, I thought about trying to remove the fingerboard, to save the cool inlays. But the fingerboard was really thin, barely 0.180" thick at the heel. At the outer ends, the fret slots cut all the way through the fingerboard into the neck wood. The fingerboard would have broken apart into pieces at the slots. And, the inlays themselves were really thin. If I had managed to unglue and reglue the fingerboard, it would have ended up lumpy and uneven. And then, any resurfacing to flatten it out would have gone right through the inlays and ruined them.

The only practical thing on this Roscoe was to put on a new fingerboard. And I was able to save the inlays by removing them and resetting them in the new fingerboard. That operation wasn't really that hard.