LED Guitar #2 - Removing a fretboard with heat

I'm doing this LED guitar for a friend who contacted me through this blog. I'll just call him Ricky (I hope he doesn't mind me using his name). He said he would mail me his guitar if I could remove the fretboard, mill it out and insert the LEDs for him. We agreed on a price and I received the guitar a few weeks ago. Here is what I did on February 18th, 2013.

When removing a fretboard I have some suggestions: if it is an electric guitar, start at the bottom of the fretboard--where the neck bolts onto the body. If it is an acoustic guitar start at the nut end.

My reasoning is that with an acoustic guitar it is easy to damage the wood surface of your guitar where the fretboard is attached to the body. So start at the nut end and work your way down.

For an electric guitar, start at the bottom and work your way up to the nut. The bottom part is mostly covered up by the pickguard, and sometimes an overhanging fretboard.

Get yourself a heat gun, or possibly an iron (if it gets hot enough), then get some razor blades and one or two putty knives or some sort of metal spatula or even a butter knife.

First, heat up the portion of the neck you're working on (in my case, the bottom portion). Next insert some razor blades into the seam where the fretboard meets the neck wood. If the glue is soft enough, the razors just sort of push in without very much resistance. Next heat that portion again with the razor blades still inserted. The razor blades will get VERY HOT. You should be wearing gloves, preferably leather. I found some mechanic-style gloves that were made of leather, and they aren't bulky like garden gloves.
When you've heated it enough, push the razor blades in all the way. There should not be very much resistance if you got the glue hot enough. Don't hammer the razor blades in or use excessive force. Once the razor blades are in almost as much as they will go, use your putty knife and insert it into the gap. You can now remove the razor blades and use the putty knife instead.

Continue to heat the fretboard and putty knife and push it along. Don't force anything. If you push too hard, you might press into the wood, splitting the fibers. If you use enough heat, the glue will go very soft and will not give too much resistance.

When I tried this with an iron it took a very long time. Some people on the internet said to be patient and it can take up to an hour or two. This seemed wrong to me. So I bought a heat gun, and I got the job done in 20 minutes. If it takes you more than 30 minutes, you're not using enough heat.

**(Disclaimer, don't hold the heat gun in any one spot too long, it can easily discolor or burn the wood if you don't keep it moving back and forth).

At this point you can aim the heat gun at the gap under the fretboard as well as heating the fretboard.

There you go. The fretboard came off. This neck was just an old neck that I practiced on. On to the main attraction:

Here I had a problem. The side dots are drilled right in between the fretboard and the neck wood... I had to melt right through the plastic side dots. Oh well. I will fill them in later with replacement plastic, wood, or brass rod.

There you have it: I removed two fretboards, each one only took about 20 minutes. I think one of them was glued with epoxy and the other was glued with wood glue, but both came off with heat.

Stay tuned for more work on this Fender-style Jazz Bass guitar neck.