How Would You Fix This Head Plate?

I'm working on a neck that I put a thin maple veneer head plate on and unfortunately my fret board placement isn't far enough up the neck to place the nut over the joint between the end of the maple and the walnut neck. Worse than that I don't have a crisp edge between the two so leaving it as is won't work in my opinion.

I've pondered this for a little while and think I have two options:

1) re-drill my fretboard alignment holes to place the fretboard close enough so the nut covers the joint. This would turn my 14th fret body joint into a 14th + 1/8", and move the bridge up accordingly. I don't think it will effect the sound ?

2) Inlay a piece of binding at the joint. This would look good I think as it would tie the purfling on each side together. But I'm concerned doing so may weaken my neck.

What would you do, or is there another option I haven't considered?

It's been frustrating the last couple of times I've been in the shop. Maybe in another thread I tell you about the bridge on my 6-string in process that is about an 1/8" too tall and how I didn't realize it until after I mounted it to the sound board.... with epoxy!

thanks for the help,
-darrel

Here is the body

Here are some pictures of the body that this neck will go on. It's the first time I've done purfling and I'm pretty excited with how it's turning out so far.

It's bearclaw spruce top, with walnut sides and a figured walnut and birdseye maple back. maple bindings with BWB purling.

-darrel

That is looking very nice. Wow. Don't know what to do about that neck. If you are having trouble getting that epoxied bridge off try using acetone and a thin pallete knife. Mask everything off from the acetone. It will wipe out finish and take out the oil that is in wood but it also detroys most epoxies. As I say be extremely careful to mask off everythig else on the uke.

replace the maple veneer...with one of the correct size.

I agree, replace the maple veneer, Looking at that gorgeous walnut back, why not use this as an opportunity and match some figured walnut scraps as a replacement?

I would reposition the fretboard to give you a nut width of correct thickness and shorten the neck at the heel end 1/8" so that your 14th is aligned at the bod joint. This is assuming that you haven't glued either the fret board or the neck to the body yet. The problem with adding a purfling strip to the head stock overlay is that you've missed your opportunity to miter those joints.

Thanks all for the input.

I hadn't considered replacing the entire veneer. It's tough to tell from my poor photography, but the veneer is a birdseye maple that already has some neat figure to it. But I do have some small figured walnut such that you've got me leaning toward inlaying a triangular piece into the middle. I think that would tie in nicely with the back.

I think I will follow chucks advice on the joint though as it is the easiest, It completely escaped me that I could compensate by trimming the heel equally.

thanks again,
-darrel