Every few months a job turns up that challenges you to the core, forcing you to think – as if survival depended on it!
It is jobs like these that keep that spark of creativity alive, which in turn, leads to a satisfied customer, and more importantly, a boost in self confidence: that is if the job is successful.
The owner of a guitar got in touch with me and sent me photographs of a broken headstock hanging on by a sliver of wood and a couple of broken braces. When I saw the guitar in person, it was called ‘Crusader’ (possibly China-made).
As I went through the guitar, I was left very impressed by the construction quality, the quality of wood used – it seemed a solid wood instrument, and the simple lietmotif of the cross – the Huguenot Cross – running from the fretboard, covering the soundhole, embellishing the wings of the bridge and embossed as the logo on the tuning machines.
It even had a secondary sound port!
However, when I took off the strings and pulled out the saddle, it was a really chewed up, plastic saddle which had broken in two at some point of time and had been glued together and inserted into the slot!
And, of course, there was a matching plastic nut
Meanwhile, the fretboard looked a tad dry and naturally dirty with some grime and some DNA deposition.
There were also two cracks on the top and the back, exactly where the end block ended (began?)
They worried me. Not that the instrument was in danger of collapsing, but my mind kept going back to how they might have been caused. At the most, they must be one-fourth the thickness of the surface on which they appeared.
But I had bigger worries. With the primary soundhole blocked and the secondary one too small to get even my small hands in, how would I be able to clamp the braces after glueing them?
After much head-scratching, I dawned upon a kamikaze tactic, one which I usually would never dare to adopt. I called the owner over put my problem across and asked permission to cut out the cross blocking the soundhole. I promised to put it back exactly where it was after I was done glueing the three cracked/broken braces.
The owner chin-scratched some and then asked if I could not cut out a hole in the side from where I could gain access to the braces. I shrieked in horror and said ‘Noooooo’!! But actually, he allowed me to cut out the cross from the soundhole.
I did mark a little ‘N’ on the underside of one of the arms of the cross to point towards the correct orientation of the cross once I was ready to glue it back.
With access gained to the insides, the glueing and clamping process began. I had to repair these on the back of the guitar and there was another cracked brace on the top of the guitar (see the main photograph).
While the top brace was simple enough to glue and clamp, the broken braces on the back of the guitar required a little more innovative thinking to clamp. I finally came up with some.
While this was curing, I turned my attention to the broken headstock.
This is after I removed the tuning machines and the intricate wooden logo and the 14 little screws (no less) that held it together. Also removed was a very handsome looking wooden truss rod cover and the three screws that held that in place. And while we are counting screws (that doesn’t sound very politically correct), do keep a count of the six holding the tuning machines!!
Anyway, the idea was to glue up the headstock to hold as one piece and then to insert wooden dowels.
Yes! Four of them – three at the back of the headstock and one in front.
I would have done splines, had I the know-how and the paraphernalia involved!
But as I was inspecting the glue-up job, I saw this, which I had unfortunately missed earlier
and naturally, it had to be corrected
Returning to the process of drilling and dowelling, this is how it went
You might notice two things: the seam where the joint is doesn’t look half as bad as it did earlier, and I used only two dowels at the back of the headstock, after initially planning to use three. This was because the third one that I planned to put in would have entered the truss rod opening on the front of the headstock.
Much later, and almost as a what-the-hell kind of thought, I drilled in third hole and plugged it. I’m sorry, I didn’t take a photograph of that.
This had taken enough time for the glue in the braces to have cured. I pulled out my dowel rods, cleaned up the best I could
and then glued the cross back over the soundhole – exactly the way it had been.
The face of the headstock, where I had inserted the dowel, would be covered by the truss rod cover, but the back of the headstock couldn’t be left with three, big, pale wood circles staring out at you from some rich textured wood. So, I went about painting that portion of the headstock, hiding the three circles in the process.
While I was examining my handiwork, I happened to glance at the side of the neck. Now, one side I had discovered a split and had glued it shut. The other side too, there was a separation of the fretboard from the neck – from the nut to say the second fret. Again I pushed glue in and clamped it shut.
Meanwhile, the back of the headstock after the paint job, looked something like this.
No where near perfect, but not half as bad as it looked to my eyes without the paint job!
But my mind kept going back to the twin cracks on the top and back in the lower bout. After all the major work was done, I turned my attention to these and sealed them. Here are two shots of each – one from directly above and one at an angle where the crack would be visible in light. (These are the ‘After’ shots).
The main thing that satisfied me was that the cracks had been secured and there was no impending catastrophe that might strike down the road.
While these were drying, the fretboard was cleaned (finally by alcohol), the fretwires were shined up, and a little love potion rubbed in.
This is before the love potion trick.
The owner has been contacted and as soon as he informs me about his choice of strings, the strength of the headstock joint will be put to test.
