normandy123

thanks for the link but after trying all day to log on to it, i give up... it just sits there. and my time is more valuable than waiting for that web page to open up... anybody have any hints on this Gretsch? I figure they glued the neck in first, then since it was single pickup did not care if everything lined up and just screwed the bigsby down wheere it was in the center of something or centered on anything close....

ok.. here is what i have, original neck, original body 1960 anniversary...when i mount the neck and center it to the middle of the guitar body (measured and marked center line) then the neck is cockeyed. If i center the neck to the original center bigsby mounting hole, which is about 3/4" toward the low E (upper bout), then it mounts up correctly and everything seems to be the way it was manufactured...could it be that off? Should i remedy the situation and center everything up ? I am building a player not a collector wall hanger...and it just makes no sense to me that the neck center is not in alignment with the guitar body center.... Anybody have a take on this?

Here is a link to a place that sell veneer softening solution ....i think kinda the same as ethylene glycol but he says safer? anyhow going to give this suff a try...might take a week or two or three at the rate i am moving... try this: http://www.joewoodworker.com/catalog/produ...products_id=191 hope this helps also do a google serch for SF-20 which the internet guys are talking about too but i don't have a clue what that is...

Well while in college almost 40 years ago i had a class in botany...bear with me... in the class we were asked to section into microscopic thin sections about 15 microns thick, some tree stems (about 1 inch thick) well the knife would not cut thru because of the chemical content of the wood, so we soaked the pieces in pure ethylene glycol for about a week and you could just about tie them into a knot after that....then we ran the section thru the staining process (soaking them in various grade of alcohol 10%, 20%, 40 %, 60%, 80%, 99%, then the aniline dye. Well ethlene glycol is just a chemical that the alcohol likes to take back out of the wood. Maybe i should tell you ethylene gylcol is very lethal and i do not know if it is legal to buy...it was back then, because there were not so many nut cases running around threatening everybody...and nobody cared about future tax payers. I know auto antifreeze is mainly ethylene glycol but is dyed and has other crap in it so it is not useable for this. Maybe while the wood veneer would be flexible you could sand bag or vacuum it the like to the surface with appropriate glue. Then lay absorbent towels soaked with various grades of alcohol work up to 99% to get the glycol out until you have a paintable surface.... This would be something Tom Anderson could tell use since he does something to bend his thick maple tops on his 'drop top' models...but i doubt he is going to reveal anything to us! I dunno if this might work, I am not endorsing it, it is a bad chemical and will waste your dog or cat or child in a day if they drink it, let alone if you absorb it some into you skin ( i think it destroys your kidneys) back then the EPA did not exist...so let this be your caveate emptor!