Hope you all don't mind my sharing again, but I must admit. I am totally addicted to restoring guitars! My son and I both have 1861s and they both were in need of a neck reset. Since, the Mother Ship is gone, and I'm way off in the farthest eastern corner of the world, where luthiers will only work on Ovation if you are asking for basic stuff like fret jobs, bridge saddles, nuts, etc... I figured I'd better get used to doing neck resets myself. I'm sure you all have already "been there, done that," but the 1861 is a great place to start because the necks are bolted on, and with some 300 grit sandpaper, clear packing tape, and a socket wrench, you can get a quick neck reset done in about 45 minutes... 
The fingerboard is glued securely on to the soundboard, but the heel of the neck is not glued. It is bolted on using this 11mm bolt. 
I just need 300 grit sandpaper and I applied clear packing tape on the back of the sandpaper strip to make sure the sandpaper doesn't tear between the gap of the neck heel and lyrachord body. Calculations told me that 0.04mm needed to come off from the heel of the neck. So I flipped the sandpaper up... 
pushed the neck forward just a bit (pushing too hard will crack the soundboard, the neck or both), and carefully and slowly pulled the sandpaper back making sure not to leave any sandpaper residue behind. I did this 15 times on the left, right and center. I then mounted the neck using the bolt again and checked the neck angle. But a little bit more needed to come off... After another 10 strokes with the sandpaper on the left, right and center. Just about the right amount of material was removed from the heel of the neck. 
And in about 45 minutes I was done. My son's guitar is right at 1.8mm at the 12 fret and sounding sweet, but it will need a fret job soon! Jeez, so much more to learn! So, I thought I'd do the same with my 1994 1861; but when I took the 11mm bolt off, there was some crackling sound and the neck just came loose! There was lots of glue under the fingerboard, and low and behold more cringing... 
Not quite sure what happened here, but I bought both of these guitars off of the Bay...really inexpensive, like...apparently the previous owner tried something and gouged the top of the soundboard underneath the neck in the process, then used a ton of some kind of adhesive to try to put the thing back together and was not successful. Hence the low price on the Bay...anyway... 
I decided to put the Slo-Zap (recommended by DanSavage) I got for my "1117-4 Repair" to good use, and used it to fill the gouge on the soundboard. 
Cleaned her up and sanded her down flat... 
Cleaned the neck up and sanded her down flat... Then I decided to add a shim to the joint between the neck and the body. This is actually an iPad screen protector. It's quite hard and is 0.05mm thick. If I ever have to do this again, I can just remove the bolt, take out the shim, and be done. 
I decided to use Z-Poxy to glue the fingerboard back onto the soundboard. I've learned that clamping order and strategy are essential to complete a project like this successfully; so I did a bunch of dry runs... 
I did a final dry run, and with everything clean, it turned out all I needed to do was reassemble everything to have the perfect neck angle! Oh yeah! So, I applied the glue and put the shim into its proper place... 
...and clamped her up...now to wait for 72 hours! I am just having an absolute blast! I can't wait to get this together and play it with the new neck angle! It's gonn be awesome! ...And then this baby came in from my neighbor...an Ibanez with a broken neck! 
This was bought new by my neighbor's son (who's living in Europe now) some years ago. This was not a factory refurb or anything like that! Talk about cringe factor. Still, it was his favorite guitar and since he's getting married soon, I thought I'd send it to him for a wedding present! I'm glad I removed the fingerboard and not the neck! What a nightmare! Hoping to get this done before summers gone! Just one more week to go!
Edited by arumako 2014-08-30 4:25 AM
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Twin 1861 Neck Resets and...