Major glue and veneer blunders -- are they recoverable?

[Rob French]

Ok. I goofed. Majorly. I know it. Please shake your head and laugh. Then help me figure out if it's recoverable, or if I should move on to a backup fretboard!

Goal: I have a rosewood fretboard bound first in cream binding, then in blank. Makes a nice contrasting stripe effect around the edge. I also wanted to have a contrasting cream and black striped underneath the fretboard, i.e. two layers of veneer. I wanted the cream (maple veneer) just under the fretboard. I wanted the black veneer to extend all the way out along the peghead.

Goof #1: I glued the maple veneer to the underside of the fretboard. I used Titebond *polyurethane* glue. Probably a bad idea--I did that because I wanted to make sure it stuck to the plastic binding too, and I wasn't sure that yellow glue would be good in that regard. Next bad idea: I didn't put any wax paper under it, because I figured the glue was sandwiched between two pieces of wood (there was enough excessive veneer around the edge that I wasn't worried about squeeze-out sticking to the work surface). Well, from what I can tell, the glue expanded itself right through the veneer (1/32"?), because I cannot remove the thing from the work surface! (Good thing the work surface was an extra board, and not my workbench, or I'd have a fingerboard stuck to my workbench... steel guitar, anyone?)

Is this recoverable? Can anyone see a reasonable way to separate the fingerboard from the other board? Or should I move on to my next fingerboard?

Goof #2: More minor. I glued the black veneer to the neck, using Titebond I (regular yellow glue). Well, if I move to the next fingerboard, I'm not sure black is what I want there. Any way to remove this veneer, preferably not by planing it off? Will Titebond I separate under heat?

Many thanks for any help on these matters.

Regards,
Glue Inept

[Bob Matthews]

You should be able to remove the black veneer from the neck quite easily by using a clothes iron seeing as you used Titebond.

Glue does penetrate through thin veneers as you have found out to your cost and I believe polyurethane glues are very resistant to heat, so the clothes iron may not work here. What I would do though is to use a thin blade such as a taper ground filling knife and work it between the fretboard and the board that it's glued to. Once you get the blade to enter a little, you can use small tapered wedges to help you curl the two boards apart and at the same time push and rock the knife blade at the glue joint. You're then in with a chance of removing the fretboard - although the veneer may well be trashed.

Whenever I have wanted this sort of effect on the fretboard edges, I use purfling lines under the edge binding as I want the fretboard to be full depth across most of its width.

[Bob Hammond]

So far as I know, (near-) innocent blunders are an inevitable part of life, and so one should only spend time thinking about them so that one doesn't repeat the same blunder. You've done that. You've also done the next and more important action -- about learning how to ask advice so as to get past the blunders.

I agree with Bob. If you can salvage the fingerboard after peeling it away, then it might still be useful for this or another instrument.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Rob,
If the board the fretboard is glued to isn't too valuable you could saw or rout it off of the fingerboard. That might limit the possibility of ruining the fretboard while trying to pry things apart.

[Mark Swanson]

Clay has a good idea, but you could combine it with some heat. Route it off as thin as you can, and then use a clothes iron to heat it and the last of the wood will peel away.

[David King]

I would just give the fretboard glued through the wax paper to your plywood surface a smack along the edge with a blunt object and it should pop right off. Polyurethane glue sets up quickly enough (unlike epoxy) that I doubt it actually penetrated through the wax paper, more likely that a bit of glue contaminated the backside.
Next time use saran wrap instead of wax paper and clamp to a ground cast iron surface that you've waxed with car polish/wax (but still use the intermediate layer!)

[Mark Swanson]

Ahhh, but David- Rob says that he didn't use any wax paper! That fingerboard might be really glued on there. It just depends on how much glue seeped through that veneer.

[David King]

Oops, I was wondering what all those little black squiggles meant. Yikes!
Well it'll be interesting to see if the board, the veneer or the neck will have more integrity. I'd still be tempted to give it a whack to see what happens. A pallet knife or a "Toledo" dinner knife (very thin, flexible high carbon steel blades very common in European flea markets) are the traditional tools for removing fingerboards and the veneer should give an extra margin of safety for the fingerboard.

[wblakesx]

Old thread but I'd try the small woodcarvers chizels, the ones with the 1/16 blade. Test for weakness at the interface and see if it could be easy worked loose. I'd think about a table saw or such, chased with sandpaper. But I'm new to serious work on guitars.