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I received this Gibson Les Paul custom from a friend who said someone dropped it years ago and he was hoping someone would fix it. At first I thought it was an epiphone (before I saw the guitar) and that the break isn't so bad... when I got it it was obviously higher value than I expected it to be but the previous fix was horrible.







It seems someone tried to glue it with white glue, didn't bother cleaning out the squeeze outs, but the fix did not hold (I don't know why, improper clamping, or simply because white glue won't hold a wood bond?) so someone fixed that using wood screws to the back of the headstock! So I have my work cut out for me...





I start the fix by gluing everything together with epoxy. I have no choice because the previous glue would not clean out because the crack wasn't that big. I used a laminating epoxy similar to System 3 but I got the ratio wrong so the epoxy cured into a hard rubber rather than hard plastic. I can't just stop here however because I need to prevent future breaks, but I can't even be sure if this bond will hold due to the fact that I am putting glue on top of old glue. So I have to use splines





Here are my clamping set up. I do not have a fancy jig or anything so I just rigged everything up like this, and used edge guides to keep my cut straight.



However the cut wasn't perfect so epoxy has to be used again for the bond in order to fill the gaps.



Splines glued in. The wooden spline was cut out by hand, then planed to size using a block plane. I cut them out of a flat sawn board of mahogany so I cut out a block, then turned it over and repeat the cut to the final size, then used a block plane to smooth everything out. It's a lot of work and I have to constantly check myself to make sure the size is uniform.





Some time with a chisel to remove the excess.









Then lots of sanding to smooth everything out, and stripping some of the old finish in preparation for refinishing (I will paint the back black in order to hide the spline)

more to come...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

The plan is to spray some sealer coats, fill the grain, then tape off the binding and spray a very concentrated brown dye on the back in order to make it appear black. I like this kind of burst better as it seems softer and more professional looking.





Sealer coat applied, and grain filled. Some sanding was done to prepare for color coats





The color coat was sprayed on, but now the serial number is covered up, so some white acrylic and a paint brush was used to touch up the serial number...



Finally, 3 coats of tinted clear was used to ensure that the new finish matches the color of the old finish







Two weeks to go for the finish to fully cure then I will buff and string it up.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Nice save!