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This past weekend I had a pleasant surprise in so much as one of my guitars came home for a few days to get checked out and have two nut slots repaired, new battery, strings, etc.

What's most interesting to me about this one is that it has had and always has a LOT of use. It's owner is a semi-pro musician who plays out weekly, has recorded several albums now, and tours regularly. Much as I would like my guitars to get great care this one has had a tough life as a result of how important it seems to be to it's steward. He plays a minimum of 2 - 3 hours a day and has done so with this guitar and only this guitar for 6 years now.

Always being one to glean data, it's my nature.... having this one come back is an opportunity for me to see how they are holding up and when I consider that this one has had a very hard life, left in trunks of cars at airports, baggage handlers, flying beer bottles in local bars, etc... seemed like some decent data might be obtained from this guitar.

The primary reason that I have it until later today is that this player succeeded in wearing two nut slots down too low. It's an unbleached bone nut that was color matched to the rest of the guitar so I did not want to pitch the nut and make a new one. Instead I used UV cured dental fillings (harder than bone) to fill and recut several of the slots. It's a great fix when for one reason or another you really don't want to remove a nut. Reasons may be that the nut was finished on the instrument (Gibson and a few others) or the nut is important to keeping a vintage instrument complete such as the Iv*ry nuts that Martin used into the 70's. So I played dentist and filled and recut the slots, easy, fast, better than new, and cannot be seen since the string is over the fill. I also matched the shade with a dental filling that must have been made for Goober Gobber with the green teeth if I remember my J. Giles correctly.

Here's some pics and also of note was that this one has EVO wire on it. The wire shows only the very slightest of wear (and this player tends to play some cowboy cords too) which was a good thing to learn.

One of the pics is not related but I wanted to show you my new apprentice. This baby mouse was found in the front yard of my home clinging to a rock. Cute little thing but where there is one there is more..... So not wanting to kill anything here... he/she was gently moved to another yard in my sub where someone lives who I don't like.... But hey the mouse is still alive!

Lastly I took measurements and there is zero upper bout distortion and the neck set remains as originally set. Bridge seems to be happy where it is too and has no plans of attempting an exit.

So there was not all that much to learn from this one, EVO is great stuff, my build style seems to work fine, bone is pretty hard but can be worn out, and Joe White's excellent Poly finishes remain excellent and even amber nicely a bit in time.

Thanks for looking and if I find more does anyone want a mouse?

Where do you get the dental fillings? Hit up your local dentist? How does this method compare to the ole baking soda/CA glue trick?

Did you notice any changes in tone to the guitar over the 6 years?

Yeah we have a dentist friend who also recently purchased some tops from us. He keeps us supplied with his last generation UV dental filling stuff when he upgrades. This includes a hand held UC light with shield for we humans.

No comparison to baking soda and CA or bone dust and CA. Dental filling is MUCH harder, even harder than bone and the procedure also includes acid etching the slot to encourage decent adhesion.

In my experience the CA and dust or BS although widely used is not a lasting fix and not something that our shop will use or do.

My dad is a dentist. I'm going to ask him about the UV cured dental fillings. Maybe he will give me some! What do you use to acid etch the slot?

A good friend of mine likes to play with mice =^,^=

JF your friend looks pretty comfortable there relaxing and all.... My suspicion is that the neighbor cat ate this little mouse's Mom already and that's why I found him on the rock. Maybe I should list him in the classifieds? Tone mouse?

Goodin sorry my friend I see that I missed one of your questions.

Yes - the guitar does have more bass now in my non-scientific opinion. It's what I would expect and over all it seems to have mellowed out a bit on the mids and the bass is more powerful. It's got an LR Baggs element UST which always worked well in my stuff but these days I am thrilled with the Baggs Lyrics and may replace the element with the Lyric if feedback on stage is not an issue for this client.

Our dentist pal gave us an acid etch to use but it's not really necessary with bone. The reason being that prior to the fill we rough up the slot with our nut files and even file in a very slight dovetail with say a .010 nut file. Bone is more porous as well making the acid etch not really necessary. For Iv*ry though we use the acid etch.

The bonding agent is the pricy part. One little bottle is about $125 US but is enough to do likely several hundred slots.

So there are three parts, acid etch, bonder (UV cured), and filler (the actual filling material also UV cured). With the UV light the bonder cured for 20 seconds and the filling material cured for 40 seconds. So all up it takes me more time to find the dental fill kit in our shop.... usually than it does to do the actual filling. It's a nice option to have and very handy when someone famous is in town, it's two hours before the show, and their G string is buzzing open and has a low nut slot. We can fill em up in minutes, recut the slot properly and hand then a completely repaired guitar where the fix will last as long or longer than a nut new. That's when they hand us free back stage passes..... Love this job!

Wow....6 years and not a scratch on it. He must be a careful guy. It still looks great.....he must like the tone to have it in for repair.

Hey Hesh - I like that giant clothes pin vice. Maybe you can explain it or do a tutorial on it in another thread!

These vices are wonderful and IMO the best guitar vice not on the market. We have every Lutherie vice available and choose these instead because they are as versatile as can be. I believe that they can be found at Bryan Gallop's outstanding school of Lutherie too. Not sure who came up with them first though but I got the design from David Collins.

The guitar just left with it's happy and somewhat drunk owner after sitting around in my home shop playing tunes for a couple of hours.

Quine this is my client's only acoustic guitar and he is more of a song writer than anything else and uses this guitar to create with. His other ax is a vintage 335 worth more than my car....

Regarding scratches, this one has a Joe White poly finish and it is tough as nails. Clearly the toughest guitar finish that I have ever encountered but still a thin film just what we want.

I'm happy to see that the finish ambers in time and was wondering about that. Some of the newer finishes in use are not ambering to my liking if at all. I've always liked how nitro ambers with age but with a bit more age and nitro can disintegrate, talk to Rick Turner about this as many of the iconic instruments are approaching an age when the nitro is going to deteriorate beyond repair.

It was a great visit though and I am always happy to see one of mine as time passes.

First vice I saw like that was in Jimmy D'Aquisto's workshop in NY City, back in the 70's. If I'm not mistaken, he got it from John D'Angelico when John passed away.

Brent

My sister is a dentist, she "rebuilt" the badly chipped nut on my Les Paul back when I was a teen-ager, before I started building guitars. It involved UV curing etc, (I think we even x-rayed it, put it in the chair with a drape and photographed it and so on, for laughs), so the whole thing was more work than making a new nut would be for me now. Your procedure is probably less involved Hesh, and I'm sure you get good results, so no negative judgment from me there.

If I want to fix a low string in an otherwise good nut now, I sometimes saw a kerf in the nut slot that's as wide as slot, and inlay a piece of bone, before filing a new slot. Invisible, and as strong as the rest of the nut, and quite fast. I agree with you on the CA/bone dust thing, its no good.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Flushtone vintage? Still looks in great shape Hesh.

I was gonna say ... With that lead in, I was expecting something more like the beginnings of a Trigger

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Interesting that the neck and upper bout remained totally stable after all that use. He must have taken better care of it than most of the pro singer songwriters I know.

Was it a bolt-on neck Hesh? Was the extension glued? How did you brace the upper bout?

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

Hesh, Thanks for that review. I don't get to see any old finishes too often unless the guitar suffers a horrible mishap. It must be really rewarding for you to see an instrument come home after being out in the elements of the real world of playing and travel.

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jw ( o)===:::

He's not careful at all and usually is known to drool scotch all over his instruments.....

It took a while for me to learn to let go when it comes to the guitars that I build and sell. But once I learned to chill a bit it was a good thing for me with my personality..... Wrapped too tight..... not me.....

Hi ya Brent. Thanks for that and we kind of thought that these things may go way back but you just filled in some blanks for us, many thanks!

That sounds like a great fix to me too Arnt and I really enjoy working with bone as well. I may try your method one of these days, thanks for sharing it!

Hope that you are doing well too my friend!

Yeah there is that Flushtone thing again, love it! Thanks Danny!

Hi Jim! Yeah I am working on my own version of trigger with my former "mule" L-OO that I built to test ten different tops on. It's become my favorite guitar to play and it's also starting to look like hell as well.... Now I just need to punch a fist sized hole below the high e string. Will I be able to sing like Willy when I do......

Hi Terry: It's a two bolt bolt-on with a double depth neck block (massive) and the extension is glued via the Mario P. method of a small puddle of Titebond (I think that I recall that Mario uses Elmers though) under the extension.

Bracing in the upper bout is pretty conventional on this one with no carbon fiber augmentation. A simple UTB and a shortened popsicle brace. The UTB is tucked, the PB only extends a couple inches beyond the fret board extension.

This player is a .012 - .053 guy even though he is a pretty big dude. So no excessive tension from strings so far.

He's not very careful with it however and it's been left in cars for days at a time including in freezing weather. I try not to think about it.....

Howdy Joe - I almost called you to tell you about this one knowing as I do that you would be pretty interested.

I have to tell ya that much of the reason that this guitar still looks pretty good is the poly finish that you did on it! This player is not careful at all. There are a few dings on it from flying objects (seriously....) and I found some mouse turds inside it too.....

But the finish is so very tough that it's perfect for the gigging musician who may get a bottle thrown at him one a month or so....

I was really glad to see the ambering too - it looks even prettier to my eye than when you first sent it back to me.

Thanks again for all of your help and superb skill with finishing Joe - you make us look far better than we really are!

Was this one long enough ago that you built it in your bathroom?

Hey Mike!

No this one was built partly in a spare bedroom in my former condo (the shop with white carpet.... ) and finished after I moved to my current shop/home.

I do miss my time in the bathroom shop though..... It was great having my wood stash in the shower and my compressor in the bathtub.... And the toilet stall made a great spray booth complete with non-explosion-proof fan.... (don't try this at home it was unsafe of me....).

Hope you are doing well too!

Nice looking guitar Hesh!
Isn't the "clothes pin" vise just a slight variation on the traditional leg vise?