Planing Off A Fretboard?

[ElysianGuitars]

i've done it before, on an RG7421 neck, but at the time i had a thickness sander(or whatever everyone else calls them), and i built a jig to hold the neck perfectly level and passed it through the thickness sander until the fretboard was gone, which worked out well... but fastforward 2 years, i'm not at roberto-venn anymore, i don't have access to a thickness sander... but what i do have is a ridgid 13" planer, and a ridgid joiner... which would work out best for removing the fretboard? any suggestions? i also have a 6" belt sander, but its not long enough to sand the whole fretboard, and i'm not getting my 6x89" sander until next month, though i don't know if i'd even want to use that to plane a fretboard off.

should i make a jig again, and pass it through my planer? or make a jig that has handles on it and pass it through my jointer?

[dugg]

Wow, sand off the fingerboard? That's a lot of dust. I've only done 4-5 so far, but I always get 'em off the normal way, heat and moisture. Most recently, I had a nice '33 Epi archtop that I thought I would be extra careful with. I looked on Frank Fords exellent website and he talked about building a steaming rig out of on old cappucino maker, surgical tubing and a hypodermic needle. I made that, and by drilling little teensy holes in the bottom of the fret slots and some precision steaming, popped that whole fretboard off in one nice piece.

I never thought of the idea of grinding down the existing board, though. It does have some merits, especially if you don't care about saving the old one. One thing though. I would certainly grab a draw knife or even my 22" jack plane and hog down a few passes first to make it go faster and breathe less dust. No?

[erikbojerik]

Under no circumstances should you use either a thickness planer or a jointer to remove a fretboard. What happens when the knives catch on the truss rod?

Go heat & steam.

[ElysianGuitars]

my concern is its another Ibanez neck, and i'm not certain about this, but my instructors at RV seemed to think they epoxied their fretboards on. when i did the thickness sander, i actually didn't go all the way through, i left a slight veneer of rosewood, which gave it a kind of cool look, which would be what i did in this case as well, truss rod would never get exposed.

[ihocky2]

There are plenty on here who will atest to being able to remove epoxied fretboards with heat. It is no worse than wood glue to remove. A planer or jointer are just way too risky to trust.

[Mattia]

Epoxy releases quite easily with heat. It's the ideal glue for fingerboards - heat release, good ones are strong as hell, no moisture introduced into the joint, and no insane amounts of clamping pressure needed. You can get stuff that sets slowly, and take your time lining everything up perfectly. What's not to love? (other than, y'know, the messyness)

[ElysianGuitars]

Wow, sand off the fingerboard? That's a lot of dust. I've only done 4-5 so far, but I always get 'em off the normal way, heat and moisture. Most recently, I had a nice '33 Epi archtop that I thought I would be extra careful with. I looked on Frank Fords exellent website and he talked about building a steaming rig out of on old cappucino maker, surgical tubing and a hypodermic needle. I made that, and by drilling little teensy holes in the bottom of the fret slots and some precision steaming, popped that whole fretboard off in one nice piece.

I never thought of the idea of grinding down the existing board, though. It does have some merits, especially if you don't care about saving the old one. One thing though. I would certainly grab a draw knife or even my 22" jack plane and hog down a few passes first to make it go faster and breathe less dust. No?

i guess i'll give this a shot, frank ford actually came and showed us how his coffeemate setup worked, and i saved a mr coffee with a milk steamer because of that demonstration... got a spare mighty mite neck that might never turn into anything i can try it on

[Mattia]

Epoxy will release with heat, moisture's unnecessary.

[Donut Man]

The guy on the PG tutorials steamed off an Ibanez board without any problems.

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/removal.htm

Floral Pattern JEMs are Japanese made, as is your RG7421. I doubt they would use different types of glue for fretboards in the same factory.

[ElysianGuitars]

The guy on the PG tutorials steamed off an Ibanez board without any problems.

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/removal.htm

Floral Pattern JEMs are Japanese made, as is your RG7421. I doubt they would use different types of glue for fretboards in the same factory.

wow, thats a great read, thanks a lot, maybe i should check the project guitar site every once in a while

[Dickie_rayne]

Ive taken 4 or 5 ibanez fretboards off with the tutorial on the pg homepage.

ive found the ibanez boards come off faster than other makes i usually get one

free within about half an hour.

i use a thin knife to start it with then a wallpaper scraper thats been sanded and

polished to about 1500.

comes off really easy.