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A customer brought me his guitar that he had previously repaired. The back/side have separated again very close to where his original repair was. I've started cleaning some of the old glue out of the crack, but in looking at it I'm wondering how thorough I need to be. He doesn't care so much about aesthetics, but wants it to be structurally sound. The new break is not necessarily the same as the original, a lot of kerfing is broken, and it looks like there's quite a bit of wood to wood contact, but the nature of this break, and how long it seems to have been left unaddressed (there are quite a few dust bunnines lodged in there) makes it next to impossible to close up cleanly.

And a follow up question, the initial impact area is super ragged looking, and the plys have begun de-laminating. Will dousing this in CA and clamping prevent the damage from spreading, and tidy up the ragged ends so they don't continually catch on things?

What kind of glue did he use?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

My thought would be to replace the binding. Looks like it's shredded already so it wouldn't hurt anything to have some fresh clean wood there.

If the kerfing is broken then having the binding off will help with the cleanup and repair in general. Replacing binding is a good bit of work however, but if he's not worried about cosmetics at all then it might be the ticket.

Not sure, it's kind of white and milky. When I pull some of it off it's like strong but supple plastic, a little stretchy feeling..

What's the best way to remove binding? I'm assuming the whole piece would have to come off? The bottom of the neck heel is flush with the back, so to get the whole piece off the neck would have to come off. Its an old Samick (S. Yairi) so taking the neck off won't be a simple operation. Not to mention the poly finish...

So it didn't cure. Weird.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I cannot really tell by the pics but if you see enough wood to wood contact then just go ahead and glue it up with Titebond or HHG. The problem with CA is that it might cause staining. CA really likes to run down the end grain lines. But if you are careful you might be able to seal the end grain with shellac and then douse it with the thin CA and clamp it up to tighten up the laminate.

In this case maybe router off the old binding and then graft in a replacement piece in just the broken area. Maybe no need to replace it all the way around. Again if he doesn't care about cosmetics if the replacement binding isn't an exact match it wouldn't be a big deal. I'd rather look at a mismatched piece of binding than a shredded one.

Well, I decided the easiest thing would be to rout that old binding off and then glue the separation and finally replace the binding. I won't be applying at any museums in the near future (the lack of close up pictures is on purpose ,) but I think I did a good job keeping this campfire guitar going!

I like it.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Too late now for this one, but routing a purfling channel to cut back past the raggedy edge might be possible for the next person with this problem. Look up 'specification creep' and 'extra work' as that's what I offered here. But it would eliminate a bunch of the ragged edge.

A very nice rescue indeed. Thank you for sharing this with us.

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Peter Havriluk

Great idea Peter! I'll keep that in mind. Although with this one ragged edges are part of the aesthetic I think...

I think you did great Conor. Nice work!