This 1938 guitar needed a neck re-set. Normal procedure requires you remove the fret just past the body (usually the 15th fret) drill an access hole thru the fret slot and insert steam to loosen the joint glue. Once apart the heel is trimmed and re-shaped to achieve proper angle/alignment. THE TWIST here was that on this model/yr. The manufacturer (Gibson) decided to glue the neck on first, THEN THE TOP, and finally the fret board. There is no physical way to pull the dove tail up thru, and out of, the guitar with the TOP blocking it! Many a guitar has been ruined because repairmen have been unaware of this construction process. The trick here was to saw thru the finger board and "relieve" the piece of the top that was glued down. It doesn't look pretty here but carefully done it works AND when the cuts are filled and the frets replaced you will never notice that anything of the sort ever took place.

First the frets are removed, then the fret board piece cut, and removed

Next the spruce top is cut. Notice that you are seeing Spruce - NOT the Dove Tail (it's Mahogany). Normally you would have seen the dovetail as the fret board would be right on top of it. Here the dovetail is beneath the solid top. The Dove tail would never have come out. It would have been blocked by the Spruce top. The only way to do the job is to remove/relieve the spruce. But only the portion over the Dove Tail. Had I not suspected this was the case the top would have been destroyed by the removal effort. Many a repairman can tell you about this sort of thing.

Now you can see the Dove Tail which was being blocked by the Spruce.

You can still see a thin layer of the spruce that didn't get "cut/removed" Luckily it was very thin and didn't impede the removal. The thin piece was cut off later after everything dried.

Nothing led us to believe there was a Truss Rod. Nothing at the head stock or the heel block. But this neck DOES have an adjustable Truss Rod...You Just have to remove the neck to get to it !!!! What was Gibson Thinking?  I wound up cutting an access hole in the block so the owner can get to it in the future without removing the neck!

Here's the almost finished pics:

Here's a pic of the repaired fret-board. She still needs some fret board oil/polish and a fret or two leveled but the major portion of the surgery is complete:

You almost can't tell that she's had major surgery...