Guild D-4 Acoustic Guitar Neck Removal

With the fingerboard extension freed up, we can now steam the neck off.

One difference between Martins and Guilds is that Martin finishes their necks and bodies separately, and then joins them.  Guild (and Gibson as well) attach the neck and then apply the finish.

What this means for a neck removal is that we need to take some extra care and not chip the finish.  So we score the joint between the neck and the body with a sharp knife.  You don't need to cut it - just a light score so the finish will separate at the line you've scored.

Now we put the guitar into the neck removal jig.

The four fasteners holding it on the body are snug, but the center pressure screw at the bottom of the neck heel is just touching the heel.

And the steaming begins.  I put the steamer hose into one of the two holes I drilled into the dovetail.

You can't see it in this picture, but there was steam coming out of the second hole.  You can see some of the condensation around the hole.

Only a small amount of water came out the bottom of the heel joint.

As I started to tighten the pressure screw, I could feel the neck was a little wobbly.  So I wiggled it a bit, and it came off easily.  I probably could have done this without the jig!

Here's the neck freshly removed and the body out of the jig.  It came off very cleanly - the finish was not damaged at all.

That black mark on the male dovetail is a factory shim.

Here's the female part of the dovetail.  Guilds are slightly different than Martins and you can see that clearly here.  The sides of the dovetail have a curve to them rather than being straight as on a Martin.

The bottom of the dovetail has more of a curve, and of course the whole heel is narrower and wider.

Here's the male side of the joint.  You can clearly see the two drill holes I made into the joint.

Next time I'll know to make them a hair further out toward the edge of the fingerboard, but they worked perfectly well in any event.

Guilds necks have a reputation for being hard to remove, but this one was very easy.  I hope the next two I have in the queue go as well as this one.