MAJOR cock-up!!!!

axisus

4th guitar build, I felt that I had a reasonable idea of what I was doing by now. Finally got my strat together and playable - in a basic, unfinished sort of way. Feels fantastic, turned out way better than I hoped, but .... a bit of a disaster. Virtually impossible to turn the Truss rod! the alignment had gone pear-shaped. I took a couple of machineheads out, got a long allen key in there and managed to tap it in with some hammer blows! Adjusting took major leverage. I'd got it to playable but the turns took the access to a point where it was no longer possible at all to get the allen key in at all. 

There was only one thing to do, and I didn't want to do it - fretboard off! Took 2 evenings of effort using two thin knives and a heat gun. I've done fretboard removal twice before but this one was much harder (Gorilla glue). Anyway, it wore out my hands (sore palms) and I got a bad burn on my arm from the heat gun barrel, but it did come off. 

Fixed the problem last night and got it glued up again. It is looking a bit more sorry for itself, needs a LOT of tidying up. Time will tell if it is good enough. I got lazy with my checks and paid a price. We live and learn. Oh well, I have heard a few times that guitar building is recovering from your mistakes, fingers crossed that I have recovered!