The Problem Levelling Necks
Yes, I said levelling ‘necks’, not frets and not fingerboards. We're talking about the neck itself here.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve talked about warped guitar necks and some potential fixes for the various ways in which a neck can ‘warp’. One, more involved, method involved removing the fingerboard and actually working to level the exposed surface of the neck (i.e. the piece that would normally be under the fingerboard.
But there’s a problem doing this, especially if you have to remove any substantial amount of wood.
The neck profile changes.
A diagram might help explain things.
Looking at a section through the neck, we see a nice, rounded C-shape. Great.
Take off the fingerboard and level the exposed wood, however, and the shape changes somewhat. The overall thickness is reduced and this brings the sides of the C in a little, reducing the width too.
That seems mostly irrelevant until you come to put back on the fingerboard.
Now the fingerboard is too wide for the levelled neck and you’ve got a sharp edge along the neck at the transition. This edge is likely to be inconsistent too, because the levelling will have concentrated in higher areas of the surface. Those areas of neck will now be more narrow.
All of this means that you’re now looking at having to blend in that width discrepancy by scraping or sanding down the edges of the fingerboard (or its binding).
That has knock-on effects too. At a minimum, you’re probably going to have to spray a few coats of clear lacquer to replace that scraped off and to blend everything back together. And, if your neck had a tinted or coloured lacquer, you’re likely to have some touch-up needed there before you get to the clear-coats.
Larger discrepancies between fingerboard and new neck size — or those isolated in a smaller area — may leave the profile feeling inconsistent along the neck. Worst case is that you may even require more extensive shaving to finesse the profile along the length of the neck so it feels good under the hand as you play. Cue more extensive finish touch-up.
All of this is to give an indication of potential hurdles involved with some of these repairs. I maintain that a warped neck is almost never beyond saving but, it’s certainly fair to say, some of the repairs can get pretty involved. An understanding of possible pitfalls like this might go some way towards avoiding your violently clutching your chest in dismayed shock as a repairer discusses costs. 😉
Or maybe not.
I’ll try pull some information together to describe a similar (somewhat similar anyway — it’s got slightly different hassles) repair over the next while.
This article written by Gerry Hayes and first published at hazeguitars.com
