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Hi all, the center fan brace on my newly finished classical is loose starting approximately in the middle and going towards the end (lower bout direction).
I can stick my hand in far enough to grab it about 1/2 of the way down and I can sweep it back and forth. I can't reach in any further. It also generates a large buzzing noise as you can imagine.

I have no idea how I can get any glue down in there. I could probably clamp it with my bridge clamp, but the clamp would be in the middle where it is starting to come off, not near the end where it is already off, although that might be enough. I thought about possibly turning the guitar upside down and squirting in a bunch of CA glue, hoping it would run down the length of the brace. Then I would only have to hold it for a few minutes. Don't know if that would work though.

Any suggestions on getting some glue down there?

LMI white. I am thinking that because I made the top a bit too thin, I accidentally pushed down on it a bit too hard while sanding and popped the brace off. Maybe the gluing surface wasn't very good either, but I can't be sure.

Thanks Filippo, actually the glue was almost brand new, so I doubt that was the problem. Where are cheap robotic arms with cameras attached to them when you need them?

Ok, you have one clamp that will glue up the middle of the brace. Get a 3$ small turnbuckle
From your local hardware store and add a caul at each end. It should look like the Stew-Mac brace jack. Look in their catalogue to see what I mean.
Go to Starbucks and get a Frappachino. Enjoy. When finished, rinse out the spoony straw.
Cut the spoony part off flat to about a 1/4" from the tube section. Water down some glue, not too watery. With the right consistency, you should be able to pour it in the straw, but not have it drip out again until you take your finger off the other end. I hope that makes sense.
Then hold your guitar facedown at an angle, place the spoony end inside the guitar against the offending brace/top junction, let some glue dribble out along the brace/top junction by removing your finger from the other end of the straw, add the brace jack at the far end, and the clamp in the middle and huzzah!

Oh good idea about the straw, I was wondering the best way to get some glue in there, and it would be better to use white glue (or maybe fish glue? That stuff works great watered down) than CA glue. However, I don't think there would be any way for me to get that brace jack thing all the way to the end of the brace, I can't even get my hand all the way to the end.

However, with the straw, some watered down glue, and at least the bridge clamp to get into the middle, that might be enough.

Unfortunately I have neither.....

Anyway, earlier today I went ahead and tried to drip some glue down there with a straw. I cut it in half to make it shorter, taped up one end, then poured some thinned out fish glue down the other end. I then put my thumb over that end and positioned the guitar so that it would run down the brace, then removed my thumb.

As the glue was running down I began to sweep the loose end of the brace back and forth to get it underneath. I was literally about .5 seconds away from stopping when the whole brace broke loose.

Well, there was already a lot of glue on it, so I 'hung' it in place (hoping that it would end up more or less straight down from where I was holding the top) until it was a bit sticky, then clamped it up. I now realize its probably going to just come back off at some point since I didn't remove the glue that was already on there and get back to bare wood, so Ill have to expect a fix at some point in the future (don't worry I'm not selling these things! Its only my second )

Anyway, good lessons learned here... I will make sure on the next one that the braces are glued on better. Looking at the brace once it was out made me think I just had too much glue in the joint.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Speci ... _Jack.html

I have a few of these jacks. Fantastic tools. They will do what you need with ease.

Sorry to hear about your problem Matt. I don’t have a solution but I’m wondering what went wrong in the original fan glue up, and if any of the other fans might suffer a similar fate down the road. Could you tell us about your initial glue up procedure; did you use clamps or a go-bar deck, dished solera, open time for the glue, etc.? Did the failure occur in the strut wood, the top, or the glue itself?

When I did some glue tests to determine open time for LMI white, using spruce fans glued to a piece of scrap cedar, all the failures were in the cedar; re-gluing would be tricky because of the uneven surfaces that were created from the break.



Can you stick a small point and shoot camera inside the soundhole and get a couple pictures of what you’re dealing with?

Joe

Ill try that tonight and see if I can get a picture of what I ended up doing in there. Its probably not very pretty after my sloppy fix (I had quite a bit of that thinned fish glue slopping around in there, at least one whole straw full). It was spruce braces glued to a spruce top.

I used a go bar deck identical to the one Waddy uses (I borrowed his plan for that). Is it possible I just didn't get enough clamping pressure?

Ok just to show everyone the mess I made, here are some pictures. My first attempt with the glue didn't work as the straw was too long and I could get it in place fast enough. Glue got everywhere.

Here is the devastation.



You can see in the last photo and in this one that my brace isn't in the middle anymore. Its pretty close though, but I have a feeling I will be dealing with this thing again at some point.



I love that there is a little pufling shaving forever attached to the inside of the guitar!

In case anyone is interested, the whole build thread is at:

http://www.luthiercom.org/phpBB3/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a