So my project of rebuilding an old KK-10 tenor neck that was previously butchered is moving along. This is practice for building a 5 string neck for the same banjo.
I've got the butcher fingerboard completely (and cleanly) removed properly now. I tried hot knives, steam. Those didn't work for junk. So I took a model airplane heat-shring covering iron and used that to heat the fingerboard and it was so easy my 2 year old could have done it.
I've got the replacement (rosewood) fingerboard in from FQMS. This fingerboard is much thicker than what I took off. As I understand it, the prewar fingerboards were all a lot thinner than standard nowadays. To compound this issue, the binding channel was cut below the fingerboard on the neck, and the profile of the fingerboard and neck don't match. I don't think I can use it as-is. I'll run out of binding height.
My question is basically where do I go from here?
Should I do the inlays first before gluing the board on the neck?
Should I thin down the fingerboard on a jointer (I'm guessing on the non-slotted side)?
At what point do I cut the fingerboard down to match the neck profile?
What do I do with the binding channel? (maybe I should plane the neck down (again on the jointer) to get rid of both the binding channel and FB thickness issue all at once?)
What would you do next on this project?
Thanks in advance!