Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm sure the repair guys here have used these for years but I just came across them in one of the GAL publications and later found a post by Mark Swanson in the mimf library with pictures.
You can self align and clamp a soundboard cleat quite nicely with them. My first attempt went well. I used a .012 E string and used fishing line sinkers as stops. I used thin plywood cauls for the cleats with two holes so they would align and packing tape on one side so they wouldn't stick to the cleat. They did a nice job of aligning the crack for later splinting on this old Harmony I'm trying to fix up. (Oh yeah, tie a knot in the end of the wire so it won't pull through the sinker)
Terry

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Very cool tip Terry!
I have used those before and they work great.
Haven't seen this in a long time though, so thanks for sharing it.

Joe

Great tip. Thanks for the great idea...Mike

thanks for the tip

Great idea Terry. And I like it better than the FRETS.com magnet method. Much simpler method
and looks to be very effective. I've got an Alvarez classical and an Alvarez 12 string here awaiting
soundboard repair and this looks like just the way to do it.

_________________
Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

I understand how the clamp works but I am wodering how you fill the hole left by the string passing through the sound board. Do you just put a little hide glue back in to let the water in the glue expand the wood back to fill the hole? Or, do you just drop fill your finish in the hole?

Thanks,

_________________
Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

It only works for cracks that you are going to splint Steve. You glue the cleat with the jig before the crack is splinted. The jig helps level the edges for the splint. If the crack is small enough that humidity will bring it together I'd glue it and apply cleats with magnets or clamps.
I'm not a highly experienced repair person so hopefully some of those guys will chime in.
On this guitar it had ladder bracing and I wanted to get a cleat between the last brace and the tail block. I couldn't reach that far with my hand to position the cleat so pulling it into position with the wires worked great.
Terry

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Terry - Thanks for the explanation. So, you glue in the cleat and once that is set you the carve a splint and glue that in the opened crack to seal it and then refinish.

Is that the procedure?

Thanks again,

_________________
Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

That's my take from what I read and saw on the net Steve so that's what I did. This was my first. A couple of repair folks said if you can see light through the crack it's best to cleat and splint. I'd be interested to hear what our repair experts have to say on this. Like we used to say in residency, "See one. Do One. Teach one." A lot of that goes on with the internet.
Terry

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Very cool. Can you use something of this nature to pull the crack back together? Or would I just split (the back in this case) the wood again? Or do i have to push from the ends?

I'd love to hear David or Jordan's comments on crack repair.
Terry

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Ok, the way i was taught to repair cracks was to humidify the bejesus out of the guitar to bring the crack back together, and then glue it. I am now of the opinion that this is a BAD way to repair cracks, because the owner will innevitably let the guitar dry out again in the future, and the crack will just end up reopening or moving somewhere else if you did a good job with cleating. Forcing a crack closed with clamps seems like a similarly shortsighted approach.

I currently think that any crack that is not completely closed when the guitar is fairly dry should probably get a splint. This is not always cost effective on cheapies, and it is really hard to do a good job of color/grain matching on any guitar, the tricky thing is that they are all a little different and it is hard to know what is the best fix for a given guitar.

For splints, i usually rout a channel with a laminate trimmer, the take a slightly overtight splint and smoosh it a little bit in a vice, so that it fits in tightly and will expand a tiny bit when waterbased glue is applied. It works best if the splint does not end anywhere- run it from the purfling to under the bridge, or under the pickguard, or fingerboard, etc. The point is dont stop a splint in plain sight or it will never look good.

The back is obviously trickier than the top. If a back has lots of nasty cracks, i would rather take it off, get everything in good shape, and then rebind with slightly wider purflings to make up for any shrinkage. Again, not always cost effective.

If a crack is pretty tight, but not all the way closed when dry, i may widen it very slightly with an x-acto blade, and the glue in a curl from a handplane. If you get lucky that can end up looking pretty good.

_________________
Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Thanks Jordan. That's a huge help!
Terry

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.