Removing Ovation Guitar Neck for Reset

There are two bolts that hold the neck to the body on the Ovation.  This is the lower one.  I suppose I could have put my mirror into the guitar to get both bolts in the picture, but I was lazy.  Plus, I really don't need the mirror to see where the bolts are.

We just take the bolts out with a socket.  I think it was a 3/8 inch socket, but I can't recall exactly.

Here are the bolts.  Complete with lockwashers.

As I mentioned in the first part of this project, the neck was partially glued on to the body as part of a previous repair.

I got under the fingerboard extension with one of my palette knives and didn't find much glue there.

Then I put some gentle but firm, judicious pressure on the neck and - crack - the neck popped off.  The 'crack' was from the glue giving way.  I was thinking about putting some steam into the bolt holes if needed, but the neck popped off with just a bit of pressure.

The now-separated neck and body.

Other than the bowl back, it looks pretty much like most any other acoustic guitar neck joint.  (Plus the bolts of course).

A lot of repair people refuse to work on Ovations.  Send your broken Ovations to me instead.

 The whole time I was taking the neck off, I kept thinking back to the owner saying a previous repair person had glued the neck on.  I didn't see any obvious damage that would have caused them to do that.  The neck joint is in good shape, the bolts are fine, and the whole thing came apart with no problems.

But now I see the issue.  At the bottom of the neck joint, see the cracked plastic and the glue on top of it.  It looks like the plastic running across the bottom of the joint on the outside broke off.  The repair person decided to just use epoxy to fill the gap.  Unfortunately, there was still a small gap when the neck was back on the body.

And for some reason, they also used glue along the edge of the slot where the block under the fingerboard extension slides into the guitar.

I'm going to clean up all the epoxy, measure for the neck reset, and then see how big the gap is.

I use my trusty Black and Decker Sure Steam iron along with a damp towel to get some wet heat on the glue.

When it's softened, I just scrape it off with a chisel.

In this case, the epoxy just started to crack when it was heated.  It came off in chips.

Next up:  doing the math for the next reset.