I'm asking all the pros out there, how much would you charge for a repair like this? First off, I did this repair for a friend. He doesn't play guitar but his father-in-law gave him this 1980 Kamouraska classical guitar. If I'm not mistaken, these were made by the Boucher brothers before they formed Normand guitars in Québec. I thought it was a great looking guitar and that it had an amazing tap tone. Hand made, solid tonewoods throughout (mahogany and WRC), and I thought it a shame that is was a total write-off.
At first, I thought I could just glue the old headstock on with epoxy. I knew it wouldn't be pretty, and I told the owner so, but he just wanted something that would work. However, someone had tried that in the past with carpenters glue, so the joint was compromised. I didn't expect it to take once I realized this, and it didn't fail to disappoint.
At that point, I decided to sand the break clean, after which, I realized there was a lot of surface to glue onto, plus, it was going to be pretty darn close to where one would do a scarf joint. God bless my 48'' edge sander!
I must say that the hardest part of it all was matching the finish. I guess the boys back in the day used a stain under nitro. I decided to go with garnet shellac and stains as I had just acquired some ColorFX stains. I added a lot of red, yellow and amber drops to my shellac, even a few drops of black. I'd add some, pad it on a test piece and look at the match. I must have done this over 20 times. The end result shellac was so dark as to look black and I would never have used it for anything, but there you have it. After that it was French polish time.
The match is maybe not 100%, but I've shown it to a lot of people and if they don't see the pictures, they have a hard time believing that headstock is not original to the guitar.
So, how much would a repair like this cost? You can always PM me if you don't want to reply on the open forum.
And if you're wondering, I'll probably be getting a bottle of Single Malt for my troubles, but I'm just wondering, are we talking a 12 year old, or a 21 year old?
Thanks!