Tony Lewis Skypilot Guitar Repair
Forum Replies Created
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Cool! (Hot?). Why not. Have used steam in the past to bend ribs in boatbuilding tradition and have thought about applications of jigging bent guitar parts and heating/cooling in steam box. Steam’s been used to shape wood in other mediums for ages. There are some great vids on the tube of steaming furniture parts you’ve probably seen. Go for it man! Experiment for the rest of us. It’s gonna work.
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Last go-round………
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Keep them coming……
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And yet more……
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More pics…….
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Update: 12/31/25. Another looth (Chip Tait) found a Frank Ford article where he fabbed a split clamp out of aluminum! So cool! He was such a genius with ideas and tools. We came up with this idea from differing needs: His article reads for his wanting reach in a standard acoustic sound hole opening whereas I was searching for a solution for getting a clamp into limited, smaller access. This leads me to what I find fascinating about cross referencing ideas and being clever enough to see the potential for other uses of an idea. I’m not so sure, had I seen this article, that I would have picked up that by splitting a clamp, it would allow for the clamp to fit in tighter openings like an arch top situation because Frank was presenting it for a different use. Frank probably knew that this could be used in smaller openings because he had to split the clamp to get a longer arm where he wanted it. Basically I stumbled onto his idea for a different use. And that’s what’s so great about Frank is that he openly shared ideas so that we could all then build on them. The old saying “nothing new under the sun” applies here. Basically we’re all trying to refine these ideas and expand and cross reference them to added uses. I’m surprised that Franks idea/creation didn’t catch on because this idea can be expanded in guitar repair to make our repair lives much easier. And, I think I will go back through all of Frank’s articles. There’s obviously so much to find!
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Nice find Chip! So cool! He was such a genius with ideas and tools. We came up with this idea from differing needs: His article reads for his wanting reach in a standard acoustic sound hole opening whereas I was searching for a solution for getting a clamp into limited, smaller access. This leads me to what I find fascinating about cross referencing ideas and being clever enough to see the potential for other uses of an idea. I’m not so sure, had I seen this article, that I would have picked up that by splitting a clamp, it would allow for the clamp to fit in tighter openings like an arch top situation because Frank was presenting it as a different use. Frank probably knew that this could be used in smaller openings because he had to split the clamp to get a longer arm where he wanted it. Basically I stumbled onto his idea for a different use. And that’s what’s so great about Frank is that he openly shared ideas so that we could all then build on them. The old saying “nothing new under the sun” applies here. Basically we’re all trying to refine these ideas and expand and cross reference them to added uses. I’m surprised that Franks idea/creation didn’t catch on because this idea can be expanded in guitar repair to make our repair lives much easier. And, I think I will go back through all of Franks articles. There’s obviously so much to find!
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Use four probes. Heat all the joints at once. Works well. Four Red Labels so far. No problem. Send photo’s of model? Dave Fengler probably has measurements for the joint location. You can locate him in the Looth Members search.
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Hi Dave. Yes, such a great resource which I’ve used. Hey, do you have measurements you could donate to the neck reset data base?
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And further……..A couple of pics. One is a Yamaha red label twelve string. If memory serves, took about forty minutes to remove cleanly. Ironically, these two pics represent the two guitars Dave likes to work on…..unfortunately, I didn’t memorialize the measurements on the Yamaha. I will on the Harmony. I’m wondering if Dave has all the measurements. Would be a great addition to the neck data base.
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And another thing (yawn)……..I noticed on all of the Yamaha red label necks of this style have truss rod anchors that twist into the wood notch See and blow up pic. Anchor has twisted counter clockwise a bit and dug into sides of notch). I suspect that simply capturing two sides of the anchor square are not sufficient. I twist the anchor plate back so the sides are parallel to the notch and then fill in the other two sides of the anchor notch of the anchor with whatever material the neck is made from (in this case Mahogany) to hopefully keep the anchor from twisting. I hope all this is of some help!
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So one of the pics shows the probe pattern I used. This was a guess as this guitar is what the measurements came from after the neck pull. They were close enough that they worked great. Now, with the measurements, one should be able to accurately place the probes. The other pic is the updated measurement pic which shows where I would now drill for probes. I feel that people are reluctant to use as much heat as necessary because of worry about finish damage. I ran some tests on old beater guitars as to when nitro starts to brown. Placed a heat lamp over a top. Browning on nitro didn’t start until about 270 degrees. I’ve read that nitro and poly won’t ignite until around 350. The softening heat of PVC and hide glues (liquid and hot) is around 150 per manufactures specs. So one can ( I do) heat the neck up to at least 200 degrees without fear of damaging finish. The heat on the outside of the heal gets up to about 130 degrees on the necks I’ve done (about ten at this point). These include all the so called toughies that consensus says are hard to remove (Yamaha red labels, Guilds, etc.) The thing about using probes is you can get heat directly to tight glue joints. When we hit the neck pocket, we are mostly heating a space. The probes are not in direct contact with most of the material we wish to heat and we are convecting instead of conducting. When we heat mostly the pocket (yes, a bit of the sides of the pocket and glue in pocket gets heated, but mostly through convection) we are also trying to heat more air (space) instead of conducting through direct contact with wood (yes, there are air pockets in wood fiber as well, but much less then the usual space we encounter in the joint pocket). So it takes much longer to heat just the pocket with only two probes, whereas heating the pocket in conjunction with heating the dovetail joints heats the neck, and joints we want to separate much quicker and more efficiently. The necks joints I’ve separated have proved this to me. So my humble take on the whole neck heating thing and the vid explains why I think using copper probes is far superior to steam and foam cutters.
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https://youtu.be/GjcX1MZUzYI?si=pVJINHwZgmcGTkfy I used four heat probes. Came off in twenty minutes . I was up to speed after doing two other early 70’s FG neck resets and am well aware of Yamaha glue mess. I use four probes minimum on every neck reset I do now. Get lots of heat directly to the glue joints. I would, at this point, argue that this is much more efficient as you can drill and get a probe right down into glue joint on the sides of the dovetail, not just the pocket, which steam only gets to. You can heat up areas that steam can’t hit. And, as you know, steam makes a mess and a good chance of misting the finish. With this system. You can put as many probes on with different wire sizes. With foam cutters, your stuck with one size. I’ll send pics of hole locations I used on the 75.
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Watch the eye balls…..
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Second iteration. I have a video coming soon on how I put the thing together and showing the different uses I’ve come up with so far. It makes cleating in hard to reach places, gluing braces, bridge plates, bridges, etc., much easier.
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Yes, once again you nailed it. And I stumbled onto leaving it as a screw pin because of exactly that. I had previously used a nut to back the screw up during dry runs but during actual glue up pressure, realized I didn’t need the nut. So what you see is the learning curve. I wiggle/screw/push the screw in on vid. I still used the screw because the threads grip the screw pin in place from clamping pressure. So I decided to leave threads instead of smooth pin. The fun was in discovering how to apply/improve the tool. And it’s even more fun watching the mechanically minded, inquisitives like youself doing the same. Yay!
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Cool. That screw is, in fact, a bull pin. The plate is not threaded. The threads help hold the screw/pin in position (won’t wiggle/fall out) Your take is spot on and the whole idea of sharing with the community is the point. Put a hopefully helpful idea and present it to the community so the idea can become the best it can. The tool was made in about ten minutes. It can definitely be refined. My trip is trying to create tools that are easily accessible and can be made using simple resources and basic hand skills. Functional, cheap, easy to make.
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Ditto on surfacing this! Was just about to pull the trigger on the Anthem for a Hummingbird and looks like issues. It’s interesting that Baggs doesn’t have a cheat sheet for models.
Thanks for bringing up!
P.S. I’m going to take the other fork in the road and say that I believe that this product is marketed to be a “universal” fit. Baggs should let consumers know that it won’t work on certain models. I’m going to paraphrase what Ted Woodford said. That anything you do to a guitar is going to change the sound of that guitar. Anything. I personally would not alter the guitar because I bought I pricey after market item that doesn’t work with that instrument. And I would turn down the work at the risk of losing the customer because my personal belief is that I shouldn’t alter the guitar for the sake of making it work when there are other choices that will work. That pickup assembly should be universal or have an alterable capacity as it is an after market item. But it doesn’t work with certain models. Just my personal take.
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That guy has knowledge and is very responsive to communication. Great resource as a lot of people still play the Ovations.
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Your welcome and thank you for the site.
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Laser temp gun. I check the wire but mainly the whole heel temp on outside and figure about ten degrees of heat loss from inside to out on guitar heel. Mandolin heel much smaller so if outside about 145 to 150F should be good to go figuring that most pva and hide glues soften at around 150F according to manufactures specs.
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Oh, he does have a cream one. Good info on the eBay site. As to measurements. Good luck.
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You can also use a Takamine pick up but from what I understand, they are slightly different in size. The guy is very knowledgeable and you can contact him through eBay.
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I’ve messed with them. The spacer is key and so is the “interegrated” saddle. Pick up won’t work without them. The best advice I can give is to get a whole new set up. There’s a guy on eBay who still has oem parts. They don’t make cream anymore but you can still get black. Way cheaper then hassling with everything. You can get the spacer, pick up and saddle.
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Ya! That’ll work…..I might weld the rod in. That’s the beauty of the 12 point. Don’t have to turn much to re-engage.
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I think severe shrinkage. The top, sides and bottom are thin and the braces are thick and everything shrink/swells at differing rates. In my young career, I’m dealing with very severe shrinking and straightening guitars is the bulk of the business. The average humidity here is 28%. Humidity can go from 75% to 4 % in a day. Instruments brought from areas that average more then 45% come here and change over night. A guitar showing severe changes came in last week and is the poster child of shrinking severity so far. The bottom braces were let into the lining and the guitar shrank so much that the brace ends actually blew through the sides and separated the binding. The brace ends stuck through a 16th of an inch in the worse spots. I hadn’t seen this yet. So far, most of my time in the shop has been educating myself in techniques to repair twists, shrink damage and warpage. It’s been fun actually.
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It works great. It will heat those joints as hot as you want. The advantage is you can put multiple probes in heating all the joints and the whole assembly up at once from one controllable heat source instead of having multiple foam cutters and having to move a single point heat source back and forth, losing heat. I’ve used six probes on a single 80w soldering pen. A 60w with four probes works great. And the pen stays stable. You can pull and twist and even turn the instrument upside down, and the pen will stay in place. I use four probes now minimum. I want heat everywhere. I’d use four probes on that joint. I’d use 14 gauge copper wire and matching wire size drill (you can get them on McMaster/ Carr in 3″ lengths.
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Great Work. The hope is that the glue joint softened and slipped and then when the glue re-set, it helps hold the neck in bent position. Now, if it’s a one piece maple neck and no fretboard, ya, it may return to former position as no glue joint to re-set and hold in new position. Cool!
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I’m virtually useless when it comes to computer stuff. Maybe Ian can help with the file downloads? I’m sure the info you give would be greatly appreciated.
