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Dent in finish.
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Dent in finish.
I have dented the finish in the soundboard of one of my current builds while trying to clean up glue squeeze out after clamping on the bridge. I used a long piece of binding and I guess I held it at a bad angle and there you go. This is only my third guitar build and have steamed out countless dents already in unfinished wood, but I am unsure what to do to get out this dent in the finish other than sand it back at the dent and rebuild finish and repolish. It‘s a tru oil finish and polished with StewMac buffing compound. Any tips?
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5 Replies
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Just going to offer you the possibility of not doing anything, it looks like a very minor mark and it’s under the strings and it’s your third guitar. Just throwing it out there….
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I second what Paul is saying, but if you did want to go hard on it, here is what you could try.
- Remove just the finish in the dent.
- Apply a damp cloth/rag with a soldering pencil to steam the dent back up.
- Replace the missing finish
The chance that the dent line isn’t going to be at least somewhat visible is low. For 100% best results, disassemble and refin the top.
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Thank you! I appreciate the feedback, both of you!
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I talked to Ian the other day, I managed to drop the end of a bar clamp on the top of my guitar #7 and put a narly but small gouge in the top. Then I proceeded to manically try to fill it and just screwed up the whole thing even further.
Ultimately I did a bit of a gouge scoop but most importantly, I finally decided to pop the bridge off, I sanded off all my old finish and now I’m starting from scratch. I’m glad I’m doing this. My fill looks pretty ok now that the finish is consistent, I actually had some imperfections in the top anyway, so it will be all in all a lot better.
I guess it’s a go big or go home thing.
It was valuable to to me to know that I can pop off the bridge of one of my instruments if needed without damaging anything.
I also spent a number of hours dicking around with the fills and stuff. Going sooner to the terminal repair saves time.
Real pro repair would probably be replacing the top entirely but this guitar sounds killer and I can handle this emotionally.
Personally though in your case I’d probably leave it, it’s like one pick strikes worth of a scratch.
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I really appreciate your viewpoint on this and after thinking about it for a few days, I decided to just leave it. The guitar is going to a close friend who doesn‘t even play guitar. He said he simply wanted to be able to say he bought the first guitar I ever sold. It will basically just hang on the wall at his house, which made it easier for me to decide to just leave it
He tried to buy my first and second guitars and I told him I couldn‘t sell them because I was still learning and that they had battle wounds from all the lessons I learned while making them. None of them are really noticeable unless you have some knowledge of guitar building, but I know they are there.
I finally agreed to let him buy my third so I was really doing my best to not make the same mistakes as I did on my first two, most of which I can intimately remember, so I was doing really well until an issue with the finish and then this dent (and a few other brand new mistakes, of course 😅).
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