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A friend loaned his guitar to someone who broke the peghead off and tried to glue it back on - very poorly. My task is to get it back apart and then try to fix it properly. I'm not sure what type of glue was used. Any help and guidance is much appreciated.







Thanks,
Chuck

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"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

I had a repair very similar to that. It was a Martin D16 something or other. one of those cheaper laminate martins. DG or something.

Customer drove over it with his truck. Don't ask me what the guitar was doing on the ground behind the truck, but anyway, had a good snap through the joint. It was still hanging on by about half an inch of fiber's. I made a custom fitted clamping caul out of the meltable acrylic pebbles (LMI sells it) for the bottom, and fashined a caul that fit on the fretboard, over the nut and onto the peghead. I blew out the crack with air, and tried to clean it up with some naptha as best as i could. I let it sit for awhile as i got up my nerve. I rehearsed my clamping routine a couple times.

I syringed in some HHG, quite a bit as i figured it was a fairly clean break and no material was missing so the lever action of closing the break would squeeze a bunch out. Then i forced the break closed, clamped it up, and let it sit over night.

Cleaned up the squeeze out and did a little finished and the joint is barely noticable. The guy says it sounds better and it's been two years with no change.

Nerve wracking, but then again, what's the worst that can happen? It's already broken!

don't know if that helps at all...

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brendan 3.0 new and improved, with better interpersonal subroutines

I can't see where the glue job is bad, other than no cosmetics yet. And a small missing chip.

Has it been strung? What did it do?

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

The owner said it wouldn't stay in tune when it was strung up, but that sounds fishy. My thought is that if the break was giving way under tension, it would either get to a point and stop, or give way completely and come apart.

Just to see what would happen, I heated the back side of the break (third picture) very gently with a hair dryer and put very gentle downward pressure at the end of the peghead. It did wiggle at the break a little bit and I'm sure that if I continued, I could get it apart. I think I'll string it up and see for myself what happens.

Thanks guys...

Chuck

_________________
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

OK, update time. I strung the guitar up to pitch and the break started "bending" a bit. I say bending because the crack didn't actually open up, but the edge of the wood on the peghead side of the break on the back of the neck rose up about 1/32" and the pitch dropped a whole tone. I can only surmise that the glue was creeping or stretching a bit. I retuned to pitch every so often and the amount of adjustment got less and less. Overnight the guitar held tune pretty well (these are not new strings BTW). Anyway, it seems to be stable now and I guess it's just going to be an ugly fix. I did find out that part of the problem is that the guy that glued it back did not have any clamps - he just smeared glue on and pressed the the parts back together and let it dry.

I have no experience with the cosmetic repairs required to make this look better. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about it?

Thanks,
Chuck

_________________
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

whether or not it was yielding before you heated it, it is now.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Howard, point taken. I should not have heated the joint "just to see what happens".

Do you think the heat weakened it too much to trust at this point? What are my options?

I'm thinking at this time that if it fails, the glue is what should fail and I'm no worse off than if I had gone ahead and separated the break.

Thanks,
Chuck

_________________
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce