Neck Reset -- Is minor damage to the top common?

Lets see,first you heat the tongue of the neck to high enough temperature to burn skin, then carefully work a thin blade under the extension to release the glue bond of which you can never be positive of type of glue used. Then you hope the previously mentioned blade doesn't catch an errant bit of wood grain and take a nose dive into the top rather than through the glue line. Now you pull out a fret over where the neck joint should be and inject steam to loosen neck joint while carefully applying upward pressure to loosen joint and if all goes well and the finish doesn't blush from the steam you can begin the process of calculating the amount of material that needs to be taken of the dovetail joint. Said joint is complicated enough in a furniture joint where you have a flat reference point,instead of a curved heal that needs to be carefully pared to a scribed line by a seriously sharpened chisel on end grain. Then wood needs to be replaced and reshaped on the now cokc-eyed joint to bring it back inline. What could go wrong?

Thank you all for the input. The damage looks to me like the "...hope the previously mentioned blade doesn't catch an errant bit of wood grain and take a nose dive into the top rather than through the glue line" category. I've seen a few videos and read enough to know that a neck reset is not a simple thing. I guess I just didn't have a feel for typical outcomes.

The shop is an authorized Martin repair shop and they've been in business a long time doing instrument repair on acoustic and electric guitars, violins, steel guitars, etc. They have good reviews but I always take those with a grain of salt. The damage has been cosmetically treated, I noticed the refinish at the heel is not quite as refined as the original (very slight pitting) but it's still hard to tell it was worked on from that. There was plenty of meat left on the frets so they did a recrown, it plays very well again. I really have no complaints about the quality of the work or the overall outcome, I just didn't know what to think about the new "feature."

Regarding expectations, I looked into getting a highly regarded shop in Austin for the job but they are not even accepting new work. I also checked a local shop in OKC that does very good work. I was surprised that the two shops were priced the same ($300) for the reset, and they were both less than half of the Austin shop's estimated charge. There was not a discussion about cosmetics vs function but the tech did comment the guitar was in very good cosmetic shape for a 40 year old.

I suspect there was no attempt to hide the fact there was minor damage as I didn't notice it at the shop and ask them about it. I just thought it might of been brought to my attention when I picked it up. Maybe there was that intent but it just fell through the cracks to speak. I'm really just trying to decide whether to shoot them a friendly email to let them know about it, not looking for any recourse, just for their information.

If it were your shop how would you take it?

It isn't rare for there to be some damage when doing a major job like this, BUT part of doing the repair job to begin with is knowing how to deal with those problems as they come up. For example, the fingerboard may chip up when I pull frets, but I glue them back down or fill them before putting frets in. Just putting new frets in on top of the chips is unacceptable. I also am under no obligation to inform the owner of every little bump in the road on a job like that as it is simply part of the job, and frankly few players understand the process well enough to know whether what I'm telling them is good or bad and it is best left alone.

That said, unless this was a particularly janky/weird guitar, I don't think a guitar should ideally leave a shop like that. Yanking on the top wood when removing the neck is fairly common, but if you separate cleanly then all the weirdness is going to be under the fingerboard extension and patching/repairing will be purely structural rather than cosmetic. Loosening the FB from the top around the edges is easy, knowing if you have it loose all the way back towards the tenon or on the sides of the tenon is harder. It isn't likely that it was a sticky part that was hard to loosen. It makes me suspicious that they had an "oops". My guess is they were separating the joint from the opposite side and jammed through the other side too soon. It happens to me from time to time in removing bridges, and it is why it is important to work around the edges as much as possible, and then follow the grain run-out direction as much as possible. The grain run out can be weird up there (tops are often selected/laid out in such a way that weird stuff ends up in non-critical areas like under the FB extension or where the sound hole will be cut out), and it might have turned a couple times under there. You also don't have the luxury of traveling around the FB extension 360 degrees. I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that there was something seriously weird. That has been repaired and touched up after the damage, so they did see it and address it.

It is hard for me to assess how good of a repair it is since I didn't see what it looked like right after the "oops". They did put some lacquer down and match the color pretty well. If they have done well in all other regards by you, then I'd be inclined to trust that it is as good as it could be. The fact that the repair of it looks decent tells me that it didn't happen due to negligence - a hack will likely tear tops apart all the time doing this, but a hack also wouldn't be able to fix it up that well, either.