Fitting Neck Shims on Guild F50 for Neck Reset

The shims are now glued on the male part of the dovetail.  Now we can trim, shimmy, scrape and carve them to fit.

I use some carbon paper in the joint so it will mark up the dovetail - actually the shims.

Stick the neck down into the dovetail.  It won't go all the way in yet.  But the carbon paper will make marks on the shims.  This is where the contact is between the male and female parts of the dovetail.  We need to shave it for a tight fit.

I can hear Toy Making Dad snickering now.  STOP!  This is serious stuff!

And here are the marks from the first fitting.

We just scrape the marks off.  I'm using a small scraper - it's micro-planing the shims.

I still can't find my small rectangular scraper.  I remember tossing it in a drawer in the tool chest.  But I can't find it.  Drat.  I need it!

I'll have to get another one.  Fortunately this curved one works fine.

After numerous fittings, the dovetail fits nicely and the neck is down square to the top of the guitar.

So I do a test of the neck set.

Wow.  It's pretty much spot-on.

This is exciting.

So all that's left is to install the pickup, scrape and buff out the two finish fixes on the top (you can see one of them near the bridge...), glue on the neck on, glue the fingerboard extension on, put some fingerboard binding back on, tone the binding, level and crown the frets, make a new saddle and nut, and string it up.

Sounds like a lot but it's not too bad.  If I didn't have a day job I could be done in a day or two.  But I do, so I'll chug along for another week or so.