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| I have an ovation mandolin, It has developed a slight separation between the heel of the neck and the compsite body. A sheet of paper will go in a little over an inch. I am going to try and force some glue in there and see if I can correct it. My question is:what type glue is best CA or tite bond ? Will tite bond adhere to the plastic composite stuff? If CA, thick, medium or thin? Or will it not help? The action is a little high (100 thou at the 12th fret). and there is no room to trim the saddle. Looks to me like removing that neck would be a nightmare for an ameteur. Any suggestions?
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | The heel has a gap and the action is high because the neck is/has moved. Simply injecting glue will not fix this problem.
You didn't write whether the neck can be wiggled forward/backward when you loosen the strings, but that would be the first thing I'd check.
Not sure if these mandolins have a bolt-on neck. If it were mine, I'd pop the man-hole cover off the back and look inside.
It could be that if it's got a bolt-on neck, then the bolt could be coming loose. So, I'd check that. A loose bolt would allot the neck to rock forward under string tension. This would cause the gap and high action.
If it's got a glue-on neck and the neck wiggles, then your best bet may be to completely remove the neck and re-glue it. A neck reset could be done at the same time to address the high action.
I would not use CA to glue the neck. The factory used epoxy on guitars with a glue-on neck. The problem with CA is it becomes more or less permanent.
Titebond, like all wood glues, will not stick to plastic, so I wouldn't even bother with any wood glues.
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| Thanks for setting me on the right course. yes it can be wiggled a little. I am not sure if the neck bolts on either. I looked inside and there is what appears to be a allen head bolt sticking through from the neck. I am a not sure if this is an attachement bolt or if it is a truss rod. The neck is straight only 1 or 2 thousandths relief. I put a wrench on it and tried gently to tighten it. No movement. I do not want to crank down on it in case it is a truss rod. I felt a little movement when turning it in loosening direction. I have a borescope I will try and get a picture of it. Will also try to get a picture of the neck separation.
If the bolt is attaching the neck will it come off if it is just removed or will it also be glued. The fingerboard appears to be tightly attached to the top. Will heating it free the epoxy glue. I really do not feel confident in resorting to drilling into it and using steam. have tried it on a few guitars with widely varying results mostly not very good. i am just an old guy doing this as a hobby. This is a fair looking instrument but I do not have a lot invested.
Thanks a lot for your advice,
Dave |
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| Here is a link to a few pics that show the inside where the bolt or truss rod end is, the separation at the heel and the string height at 12th fret.
Thanks for looking. I guess I could just screw that allen head out and reveal if that is a truss rod or attachment bolt? sorry for the double post I am new at this and cant seem to find a place to delete a post reply.
Edited by oldbrodave 2018-05-04 9:35 AM
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| Here is a link to a few pics that show the inside where the bolt or truss rod end is, the separation at the heel and the string height at 12th fret.
Thanks for looking. I guess I could just screw that allen head out and reveal if that is a truss rod or attachment bolt?
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch7tm87y30d5uc4/AAC3oiPqDbyBi5rOu9TLVMH1a... |
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Location: Katmandu | That's the truss rod. What kind of model is it?
Edited by leonardmccoy 2018-05-04 10:28 AM
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | As McCoy says, that's the truss rod. It looks to me like the neck is glued on. If it were bolted on, you would see the hex head of the bolt immediately below the truss rod.
Since the neck wiggles, that means that something inside the neck joint is amiss. Something has come loose. Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to remove the neck.
You're correct. Dry heat will work best. Removing a fret, drilling a hole, then injecting steam only really works on water-based glues. The heat of the steam will soften the epoxy, but it won't dissolve it like it would with hide glue.
WRT the neck/fret board extension, (FBE) the FBE is glued to the top using epoxy. You could heat the FBE to soften the epoxy, then work a thin putty knife to separate the FBE from the top.
Naturally, you'd want to mask the top and only heat the FBE. Once that's free, you'll have a better idea about how well the neck is attached to the body.
It sounds to me like the neck is already mostly free and it's being held on by the FBE. Like I say, the only way to know for sure is to take it apart. |
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Location: When?? | Curious.. is it possible (or practical, actually) to convert a glue-on neck to a bolt-on as a reattachment method after it has been removed? I realize this project is a mandolin, but I am curious mostly about Ovation guitars of various nomenclature. |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | It also looks like part of the neck block next to the truss rod is broken and a piece is missing. I assume each side of the truss rod should be symmetrical, but this is the first time I've seen the inside of a mandolin. |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | Love O Fair - 2018-05-04 10:11 AM
Curious.. is it possible (or practical, actually) to convert a glue-on neck to a bolt-on as a reattachment method after it has been removed?
Ken (arumako) did it.
You need to search around to find it.
But he rebuilt/recreated, a Celebrity with a bolt-on neck joint.
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Location: Boise, Idaho | I was thinking of arumako's rebuild, but forgot to mention it. You may need to do something similar, but if you want a less intensive project, you could borrow his ideas to build up the neck joint and neck block and then reglue it. First step is getting the neck off.
I just did a search for you. Unfortunately, arumako used Photobucket, so none of his pictures were accessible to me. I couldn't find any that he posted to an album on this site, either. Sorry.
Edited by Mark in Boise 2018-05-04 2:39 PM
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Location: When?? | Thanks for checking, Mark. Nothing pressing or urgent, but if it gets to that point I'll go ahead and contact him for details and pics since complete neck removal and reattachment (anything luthiery, actually) would be new territory for me. What I really need is a $40 beater that I can dissect and tinker for medical research before digging into anything of value, but those are hard to find in an Ovation. |
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | Love O Fair - 2018-05-04 10:11 AM
Curious.. is it possible (or practical, actually) to convert a glue-on neck to a bolt-on as a reattachment method after it has been removed? I realize this project is a mandolin, but I am curious mostly about Ovation guitars of various nomenclature.
It is possible, but it would be difficult on a mando because of the lack of material making up the heel.
Drilling the hole(s) and screwing in the treaded insert runs the risk of splitting the heel.
Personally, if it's a glue-on neck, I would clean off the old epoxy, then re-glue the neck. |
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | Love O Fair - 2018-05-04 2:18 PM
Thanks for checking, Mark. Nothing pressing or urgent, but if it gets to that point I'll go ahead and contact him for details and pics since complete neck removal and reattachment (anything luthiery, actually) would be new territory for me. What I really need is a $40 beater that I can dissect and tinker for medical research before digging into anything of value, but those are hard to find in an Ovation.
You're right. $40 beater Ovations are pretty hard to find. But, $100-$150 beater Ovations are not.
In order to find them you need to haunt the usual sources on a daily basis -- eBay, Reverb & Craigslist.
I buy them to re-top and learned about their construction as I've worked on them. |
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| Thanks for the input guys. I think I will get the old iron out and take a shot at removing the neck. Nothing ventured nothing gained and as I said I do not have a lot invested. It is a celebrity mcs 148. I bought 3 of these out of a thrift store have no idea where they got them. In a previous post I asked about putting a trapeze style tailpiece on one of them that had a blown out bridge . That worked out pretty well. This one has the neck problem and the third one is essentially junk,looks like it was crushed somehow. Someone may have dumpster dived them at musicians friend. |
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| Well I managed to remove the neck. the FBE popped right off so I decided that I would remove the whole fingerboard to get a better look at the joint.
It was a more or less traditional dovetail joint. I think it may have been carved by Korean children using machetes. I resorted to my little steam machine to loosen it. That went fairly well came off after a little wiggling. Inside was just plain ugly. Take a look at the picture. What is that stuff. Some kind of epoxy?
The right side has what looks like a shim still adhered to the plastic part of the dovetail. I will try and clean all of that glue out and see how the joint looks then. The square portion of the neck that extends back into the body holds the truss rod end. It is split but looks an easy repair. The damage that was visible in the inside pic of body is to that extension half of the support that was glued to the top is missing. also looks repairable. I believe that the damage as well as the neck problem was caused by over tightening the truss rod. It was absolutely maxed out. My question to all you folks is what should I use to reassemble the joint. What type of glue or epoxy adheres to the wood as well as the plastic. I will have to wait til I get it cleaned up to get an idea about adjusting the neck angle. Is there a formula or is it just a matter of eyeballing it with a straight edge.
take a look at the new picture in the previous post link and thanks for any input.
Dave
Edited by oldbrodave 2018-05-06 10:10 AM
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| Old Man Arthur - 2018-05-04 1:22 PM
Love O Fair - 2018-05-04 10:11 AM
Curious.. is it possible (or practical, actually) to convert a glue-on neck to a bolt-on as a reattachment method after it has been removed?
Ken (arumako ) did it.
You need to search around to find it.
But he rebuilt/recreated, a Celebrity with a bolt-on neck joint.
Here you go, there's also a reference to a previous posting by Ken Arumako:
http://www.ovationfanclub.com/megabbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=48...
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Location: When?? | Thanks, Bob. It looks like Ken has the method dialed in quite well. |
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | oldbrodave - 2018-05-06 8:01 AM
Well I managed to remove the neck. the FBE popped right off so I decided that I would remove the whole fingerboard to get a better look at the joint.
It was a more or less traditional dovetail joint. I think it may have been carved by Korean children using machetes. I resorted to my little steam machine to loosen it. That went fairly well came off after a little wiggling. Inside was just plain ugly. Take a look at the picture. What is that stuff. Some kind of epoxy?
The right side has what looks like a shim still adhered to the plastic part of the dovetail. I will try and clean all of that glue out and see how the joint looks then. The square portion of the neck that extends back into the body holds the truss rod end. It is split but looks an easy repair. The damage that was visible in the inside pic of body is to that extension half of the support that was glued to the top is missing. also looks repairable. I believe that the damage as well as the neck problem was caused by over tightening the truss rod. It was absolutely maxed out. My question to all you folks is what should I use to reassemble the joint. What type of glue or epoxy adheres to the wood as well as the plastic. I will have to wait til I get it cleaned up to get an idea about adjusting the neck angle. Is there a formula or is it just a matter of eyeballing it with a straight edge.
take a look at the new picture in the previous post link and thanks for any input.
Dave
Yes. They used epoxy to glue the necks, and just about every other joint. You can use it to assemble the heel cap to the heel and the hardware store grade 5-minute epoxy will work fine to re-glue the heel cap.
The easiest way to clean off the old epoxy is to use a heat gun. This will soften the epoxy enough that you can easily lift it off with an Xacto chisel.
Since the original joint was glued with epoxy that's what you'll need to use to reassemble the neck. The epoxy has already sealed the pores of the wood, so no conventional wood glues will hold. CA is absolutely the wrong glue to use here because it grabs unexpectedly and is impossible to separate later on.
WRT which epoxy to use to re-assmble the neck, I suggest Hysol 0151, which is available from McMaster-Carr. This is a high-stress joint and you don't want to cheap out here with hardware store epoxy.
WRT neck angle, see Frank Ford's page on checking neck angle on a guitar. (See: http://frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Guitar/Setup/NeckAngle/neckang...)
Basically, you want the neck angle aimed slightly even with or higher than the top of the bridge. Anything between 1/16" - 1/18" is good, but you don't want more than 1/8". |
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Location: Yokohama, Japan | oldbrodave - 2018-05-06 12:01 AM
Well I managed to remove the neck. the FBE popped right off so I decided that I would remove the whole fingerboard to get a better look at the joint.
It was a more or less traditional dovetail joint. I think it may have been carved by Korean children using machetes. I resorted to my little steam machine to loosen it. That went fairly well came off after a little wiggling. Inside was just plain ugly. Take a look at the picture. What is that stuff. Some kind of epoxy? 
Yup, that's epoxy. Pretty sure it's local Asian stuff. You should see the epoxy they use in MIC made guitars. They not only look nasty, they smell worse then they look! When you clean-up the neck joint, you'll want to be careful about neck alignment. The Os made in Asia are made with high tolerance and low precision. This allows for easier (and cheaper) mass production output. That means precision is added with shims, spacers and glue. You'll want to use the bridge (assuming it's still on the mando) as your neck alighnment reference. Unfortunately, once the mortise and tenon are cleaned up, you might find that the heel of the mando's neck is NOT cut to align the neck with the bridge! Unfortunately, that's been the case with nearly all of my guitar bolt-on conversions. The recent CC257-YB would be the exception. That's why Dan and others always suggest just gluing the neck back on to the bowl. Leave the shims and spacers where they are, clean-up, add adhesives clamp and go...much easier. With regard to the cracked neck extension in the pic above (hope you don't mind my using it here). The truss-rod adjustment end is housed in there right? You'll need to make sure that block is glued and clamped back into position. If I'm not mistaken, that is a high stress area where the truss-rod pushes against the wood to provide leverage to straighten out the neck. If this area was cracked before you removed the neck, that could be the reason your mando was having playability problems. The truss-rod would have nothing to build leverage against and your neck would be bowed with little hope for adjustment. You'll need some strong adhesives that enable the joint to bond stronger than the wood. Since it's wood-on-wood hide glue would do well here also. Hope that's helpful. Gotta go for now, but I look forward to following your progress! Welcome to the OFC & BFLG! |
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Location: When?? | @arumako ->>>With regard to the cracked neck extension in the pic above (hope you don't mind my using it here).<<<
Man, that photo reminds me of the car wreck films they used to show us in driver's training class. Once the tow truck gets it off the road, wouldn't the cracked neck extension (at least that one) be better secured if screwed back together on both sides of the inner truss rod (with recessed screw heads if need be) rather than glued and clamped? Or perhaps both, with the screws being set during the glue's open time and more-less serving as a permanent clamp? Or are wood screws an amateur (me) cheat to true luthier prowess and pride?
Edited by Love O Fair 2018-05-07 9:43 AM
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Location: Yokohama, Japan | Love O Fair - 2018-05-06 11:24 PM
Once the tow truck gets it off the road, wouldn't the cracked neck extension (at least that one) be better secured if screwed back together on both sides of the inner truss rod (with recessed screw heads if need be) rather than glued and clamped? Or perhaps both, with the screws being set during the glue's open time and more-less serving as a permanent clamp? Or are wood screws an amateur (me) cheat to true luthier prowess and pride?
Hey Al,
IMHO, I don't think using screws are amateurish at all. As a matter of fact, most bridges are assembled using both adhesives and screw/bolt combinations. However, even in the case of bridges, the bolts are there not for primary security, but only as a secondary measure to make sure that the bridge doesn't peel off with a bunch of sound board chips attached to it. If the bridge peels off (that's the kind of repair I had to do on my 1117-4), the bridge bolts keep the general structure in place to ensure the whole thing doesn't explode to bits.
So both will work in this case, but screws or bolts/nuts alone won't get the job done. Wood screws will secure the local application vicinity, but wood is amazingly flexible and will expand/contract and generally move hundredths of inches at a time squiggling around under the bolts. Eventually, they'll loosen up; and hundredths, for sensitive areas like neck joints, finger boards, bracing, etc... can wreak havoc to the final set up of the guitar. Plus screws, bolts and nuts are heavier than adhesives and can tip the balance of a guitar's center of gravity.
Never worked on a mandolin; so, I couldn't say how they would be affected by screws instead of adhesives, but if oldbrodave goes for a bolt-on neck and adds screws to secure the truss-rod housing, that could affect a small instrument's balance rather significantly...maybe? - anyway, my policy is when in doubt follow Dan!
Hey, hope oldbrodave's mando project is going well...any update? |
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Glue type
