Tony Lewis Skypilot Guitar Repair
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It makes me realize how spoiled we are here in America. I shouldn’t complain as to the time it takes to get stuff and that I can get it at all.
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Pic of area behind bridge after repair. The gap is 1/16th+ below flat. It was dead flat after guitar was strung up. The same thing in the front of the bridge. The gap was 1/16th+ above flat. I lucked out and guessed right.
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More pics……
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Just did a top flattening on a 1964 Gibson D45 12 string that had an extremely sunken/bulged top and loose braces much like your situation. It had loose, but not broken, bracing around the bridge sound hole location. I went for the whole enchilada instead of just going for a standard “belly repair” of just the bridge area because the sound hole/bulge areas were so depressed/bulged. The sound hole area was 1/4″ lower in the middle of the top then at the sides. The bulge was 1/4″ above flat behind the bridge from the sides.
My plan was to heat (larger version of using a heat plate on bridge plate) the effected areas of the top so as to let the brace joints in those areas slip, while raising and lowering by interior jacking and exterior clamping with cauls.
I hydrated the box for two weeks so as to add moisture to the wood as well as the glue joints thinking that this would help bracing joints slip as well as soften wood bracing wood ease to new shape and to help to maintain desired shape when cooled (I watched Bob Taylor’s vids on hydrating. Amazingly, the top flattened half way to the goal I had set). After this operation, I was going to check in case of needing neck reset. It didn’t. I have pics and can explain how and what I did if your interested. The action on the guitar was 3/8″ before the repair. It looks like the action is not too bad on yours? After the repair, it’s still sitting at 4/64th’s at the 6th and 3.5/64th’s at the 1st after two months.
It worked great. The customer let me go for it because it was a wall hanger otherwise.
I know that others have fixed by taking the top off and re-building but I wanted to see if there was a way to flatten without top removal/rebuild.
Like Ian, I suspect that barring any impact to the top, string pressure and the bridge pull broke the bracing and I suspect that’s why the brace glue joints separated on the guitar I worked on. I have seen this situation on another old Gibson where All the top bracing had pulled away at the sides like yours. Since that guitar was set up OK, I did what Ian suggested and wedged the ends. I was afraid that if I tried to clamp the joints tight, I’d blow out the top, side joint. I think I have pictures of that. The 12 string was much more extreme. If you go for flattening the top without top removal, I’d leave the braces broken for now as they aren’t putting pressure in those areas and would inhibit the flattening process and glue them after the top is in position. That’s what I did thinking they’d help hold the top in it’s new position instead of fighting the top back into old position. And I removed the bridge and bridge plate thinking that they would fight to keep top in those areas from flattening.
I love these help vids Ian’s doing and how he would handle things. Great idea!
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Thank You Claude! The terminology is fascinating! How is the repair coming?
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So, finishing is my weakness and have been testing away on junk guitars. The terminology is fascinating. Can someone (Ian?) give me the spelling and meaning of (going to use my phonetics from the pronunciation here) “shecoiance”? Cool vid! Thanks!
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I just revisited this video. The assembly around the heel looks a lot like yours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7EsAzVvMw
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Granted, you guy’s have so much more experience then I. Just basing my thoughts on my experience so far. I didn’t mention that the binding looks crumbly/fractured in the photo’s and I was thinking I’d be worried about mangling the fretboard binding during removal process. That’s why I was thinking you could possibly find out the nature of the joint in stages. Since you’d separate the fingerboard from those blocks anyway, I was thinking you could stop there, remove the blocks (they look loose), and have a gander. If joint type discovered, great, if not proceed with complete fingerboard removal. I’m really interested in this one because every vid I’ve seen on mandolin neck resets have been disasters, fingerboard removal or not. So having fun hearing from the experienced and following along. I’m sure you guys have dealt with crappy binding and all. I’ve only dealt with removing fingerboards with fairly good binding intact. I hope KT that you post the event? Thanks, Tony
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If fake, replace? If not, I’m a total proponent of heating method. Almost every bent neck coming in to the shop has been back bowed do to lack of humidity here in the desert. Of course single action truss rod will not fix. Is the truss rod functional (nut does tighten up?)? If it is, I’d heat it. Easy fix if works. I use two heat lamps and I’d heat the neck to 250 degrees (hadn’t had anything fall apart, including thin vaneers at that temp). I’d over bend it to an up bow twice and a half what the measurement is of the back bow above flat. Pics of a successful neck re-bend. The neck was maple . This one had the finger board off but have done a few with fingerboard on , including one with thin vaneer. It was 1/4″ back bowed. I over bent it to up bow past flat 5/8″. I took nut off truss rod so no pressure on neck. I heated it to 250 and let sit for a week (some people say fine to go after 24 hrs.) I tightened truss rod to snug before releasing from clamps. Worked great. Also: Note reflective sheetmetal under neck. Heats up neck from below. Got that from Scott St. Dennis. Thanks Scott!
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Eddie, yes excellent. Have watched vids of guitar and Mando heels with dowels. I’ve been thinking about the application of using an oscillating cutter as a way to tackle that problem. There are very thin, narrow blades available now. Fein makes one that is 0.25 ( which is only a couple of thou wider then most standard fret slot of 0.23) thick and 3/8″ wide. It only cuts 1-1/4″ inch deep but could be extended by welding extra blade length on. My thinking is to cut through fingerboard at 15th (or whatever fret is next after body end fret) fret on center. This would be a nice, neat cut instead of total heel cut. This could also be used if fingerboard off and doweling (0r screws? Blade will cut steel as well) has been determined. Much less intrusive then cutting and chopping using hand tools. I guess what we’re trying to find is the easiest, least impactful way of finding out how the heel is attached. I would certainly use your idea and take off fingerboard before cutting it off although still wouldn’t tell us if doweled but would foster easier access. I would still be hopeful to try and take blocks out first though to see if that would lead to discovery of how heel is fastened. If it shows slotted joint, I’d go for cutting slot through fingerboard in anticipation of dowels. The slot would be fairly unobtrusive and would be covered by fret. At any rate, I’m going to build a mock up of the dowel situation and put the oscillating saw technique to the test.
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It looks like it has interesting spacer blocks under the fingerboard extension. Maybe try to separate and remove the block (#2) nearest sound hole from the fingerboard extension and top, as it looks like it’s separate from the block towards the heal (#1) and loose? Then you may be able to see if block #1 goes across the top of the dovetail, locking it in. If it does, you may be able to remove that block as well by separating the fingerboard over that, installing heat probes into that block into the vertical joints from the fret slots above the joint, four probes total, and taping out sideways with pine and cork punch so as not to mar. If this works, you can use the same probe holes to remove neck. I watched a vid where the spacers went over the dovetail. Repair person cut fingerboard not knowing that. Still had to remove all the pieces and rebuild. Was a mess. But, in the end, may be easier anyway. If you try though, and do get top of dovetail clear, then probes should get the neck off.
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This?
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Man….Just went through the insurance grinder. I don’t know about Texas but here in Cali, getting home business insurance is a nightmare. Getting a homeowners insurance policy is next to impossible if you have a business at home. Our homeowners insurance carrier asked if anything had changed when the policy was up for renewal and I told them I had a business at home. They sent a cancellation notice a week later. So not sure whether you want to tell your homeowners insurance carriers that you have a business on the property, especially if you hope to have “foot traffic”. Texas hopefully much different. Having said this, Hartford offers great small business insurance. I am home based as well and have a business policy with them. The agent I deal with is based in……Texas! I have a business policy which covers personal liability, instrument coverage etc. and pay around 103. a month.
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Hi Joseph. How much room between the brace and the heel block? 1/2″? What I’ve done in similar circumstance is to take your shaved/cut 12 point 1/4″ shallow 3/8″ socket (12 point sockets, as you probably know, start out thinner than their hexagonal counterparts and 1/4″ inch drive keeps them in a straight cylinder) and cut down to absolute minimum so you have just enough depth of 12 point to grab nut and be flush with tail block. Then weld/fasten a piece of thin flat stock steel to the socket and make it so that it just clears bottom and then ell’s out 90 degrees for leverage. 12 point sockets don’t need to be rotated as much as hexagonal so “throw” between twists is much less allowing for easier adjustment. I shave sockets to thin them by sticking in a drill press before cutting down and using a file. Can do same by setting a drill with 1/2″ chuck in a vise. Sorry if this is just redundant nonsense you’ve already thought of or that it won’t work in your situation.
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Hi Nathan. Here are the dovetail measurements from the FG75. Don’t know if they’re the same but may get you in the ballpark.
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Just did neck removal on a ’74 FG75 with a crack in the heel (although it looks like the crack is possibly a lamination joint due to straight and clean line, but not sure if they laminated heels on this model). At any rate, I used a neck jig so as to push the whole heel up and out instead of trying to finagle the top half out seperately from the bottom half. You probably know better then I that Yamaha ‘s from the 70’s on can be tough. I’ve done three now (two 70’s red labels and this one) and I used four probes (removed the 14th and 15th frets and applied two probes per fret) to get as much heat to the heel as possible. On this last one, I let it heat up for an hour. I got the outside of the heal up to about 140 and I believe the inside around the probes got up to about 150. I applied water sparingly to the holes with a pipette. After the hour, I finagled the neck by hand and got the top half loose, and then weasled the bottom half for a while until movement. Then applied upward pressure with the jig. It came up and out easily. I had some tear out on the fingerboard extension (once again, can be tough as glue is unknown) even after taking time and being careful. Will easily be repaired. The dovetail joint came out super clean. One thing I’ve been doing is re-enforcing around where the truss rod square end is. I’ve noticed that on every neck, the end has twisted a bit into the groove designed to keep the end from moving. I straighten out the end and add mahogany above and below into the groove and tight to the truss rod end to secure and lock it into place. For the heating process, I use a soldering pen set up which has been working quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcX1MZUzYI&list=PLonJmw_G_nrfLTfFG2mRtM7yM3NtDTGX6&index=49
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There seems to be a need for a machinist resource for making/copying parts. Do people think there might be a market out there worth pursuing? I’ve been thinking about buying an overhead mini milling machine with cad capabilities so accurate copies of things can be produced.
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Further. Ian nailed it with the word “recividism”! Thus the importance of releasing the brace joints. I’ve learned the hard way about this. You go through all the motions of clamping the cracks tight, glue, then put it all back together only to have the thing come apart later. The braces hold everything in position. So when you clamp something where there are braces, your working against the tension of the bracing unless you release that tension. So, I’ve found that you want to release or ease the brace glue joint, then clamp while hot, then let cool in position you want. Much like heating glue joint on a fingerboard to re-bend for relief/back bow. In the case of the Gibson shown in the pics above, the rosette was totally caved in and shrinkage/cracks galore in that area.
Summary: What I’ve found is that if brace glue joints aren’t released, then your working against that memory and tension in that joint. I don’t know the bracing on this guitars but assume there is a side to side brace at least near the end of the finger board extension. In case of the Gibson, there were two small angled cleats around rosette, , on large cleat running side to side between neck block and thick side to side brace. Really hard to pull cracks, rosette problems together and keep them there with all that holding everything in that position. So highly recommend heating to and hopefully allow slippage of bracing/cleats. Of coarse there may be the chance that the area separated from the braces/clamping. If so, great.
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Man, I’ve been dealing with a lot of this type of thing out here in the desert because of extreme low humidity. If it’s happening on both sides, I would suspect shrinkage of the top. I’m finding that the top, bottom (those areas where wood is much thiner) etc, obviously shrink and warp at a much higher rate then tail/neck blocks. What looks like happens on most of the instruments with this problem is that the top shrinks at a much greater rate then the blocks. Most of the time, not only does the top crack around the neck block, but the tail block as well causing the same type of cracking on both sides of the blocks. I bet dollars to doughnuts that the block hasn’t moved and that the top shrunk and oozed on either side of it. I just dealt with the same situation on a guitar where that area of the rosette came apart. Is the rosette affected as much on the bass side? On the guitar I worked on, the rosette separation was much worse on the treble side. I suspect this was due to the pick guard shrinking in different ways then the surrounding top (as evidenced by the typical crack that forms next to pick guards on many instruments). The rosette on the guitar I fixed was much less complex. Here was the fix: Yes on the neck removal to access that area. I had to do a neck reset anyway, so this was in conjuction to it. First, I super hydrated the body. I took four plastic containers that fit through the sound hole and used fairly damp/just this side of soaked rags rolled up and fit into the containers. I placed them in the upper half of the body and covered the sound hole and bridge pin holes to seal body. I let this sit in place for two weeks, re-dampening the rags every couple of days. This worked amazingly at re-swelling and tightening of that area. In your instance, you may want to remove the pick guard and the inlays of the rosette if possible so as to allow rosette joints to more easily swell into position and to allow for slipping in the next process. The next procedure was the introduction of heat. The idea being that hopefully the top has enlarged, moisture has been added to any glue areas and that when heat is added, any glue areas will slip back into areas we wish to re-align. So, To that end, I pulled the containers and set up cauls and clamps as to where I wanted to apply pressure to re-align and tighten cracks etc. The reason I used heat was that I wanted to hopefully heat glue joints of the braces to allow them to slip as I pulled and pushed the different areas I wanted to move. Tricky because you don’t want the whole thing falling apart! I used a combination of plates, clamps and jacks to pull it off. I put the guitar body on a flat piece of plywood (bottom) using spool clamps in areas to counter pressure where I was using jacks on the inside so as not to separate the side from the top. The plywood on the bottom acts to keep bottom flat against the pressure of the jacks pushing against the bottom. All this was important because I figured that when I applied pressure form the sides and top with clamps to pull the cracks back together, I didn’t want the top to cave or raise out of a flat plane, or the rosette to deform and stay flat. So flat blocks were placed under the bracing around rosette and areas of crack to keep those areas in a flat plane. They were held in place by jacks which were supported by a block laid across the bottom braces.
Then heat was applied to the top in the areas I wanted to push and glue back into shape. I used two heat lamps and heated the top to two hundred degrees. I heated the top for forty five minutes, constantly monitoring with a temp gun to make sure not to overheat. Then I removed heat and clamped flat boards across the top, effectively sandwiching the top into a flat plane, and hopefully pushing the swollen cracked areas back together. I let the whole contraption sit for a week so as to allow the wood to dry out and settle into a new position. I then removed all the clamps, jacks, etc. and…..it worked! All cracks, joints, etc., had tightend up and remained in place. I then used standard repair methods to glue cracks. A lot of work but the results were worth it. I don’t have picks of that guitar but I have picks of a similar repair where I used the same techniques to repair an extreme sunken top around the rosette, causing rosette cracking and shrinkage and belly bulge behind bridge. I was able to successfully flatten the top and swell back into position the shrunk areas around the rosette.
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Ya…..You’ll find out that there are quite a few companies that glue over the finish and not just on cheaper guitars. They’re like surprise packages…. You can make a paste out of material similar to the top. You can use rasped flakes (chunky better then sanded) mixed with any of the Titebond wood glues to form the paste. Don’t be afraid to use higher heat on the bridge. They’re usually unfinished and you can heat the crap out of them. Experimenting on cheapies like you are is a great way to find the limits. I’ve read up on melting temps of PVA glues and most soften at about 150 degrees. But you need to account for heat loss from the bridge material (wood most of the time) which acts as a “heat sink” which takes away a fair amount of heat from getting to the joint. Of coarse we need to worry about the surrounding finish but by heating the bridge only, you are limiting the heat to that area. And if you heat the spatula you’re using, you can limit the heat to the under bridge area by bending the spatula away from the top. I’m finding that you can heat the bare wood up to close to 300 degrees works well. Same with the spatula. Getting that glue joint at least to 150 is the key. Also, wood grain direction is a consideration that we often forget about. Most guitars have book matched tops which means the grain on the two pieces of wood can be going in different directions. You want your spatula to be going with the grain of the wood to limit tear out. Picture the hair on a cat. You go against the lay of the hair and the cat gets fussy. If you pet the cat in the direction of the lay of the hair, the cat purr’s. It can be tricky to find the lay of the grain on the top. You can look in the sound hole and usually can see the lay of the grain and extrapolate that to what’s happening under the bridge, fingerboard extension, etc. when using the spatula. Oh, forgot to mention that you also want to scribe the finish with some sort of knife, around the bridge, fingerboard extension etc. before removal so you don’t get finish/wood tear out as well. Hope this is useful info!
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Interesting! A few people have been asking……..The problem for me is room! Already swamped with cases from repair work. But there’s an old KMart building for rent……. There’s probably a market out there for repairing cases in it’s own rite. Stewmac can get into case resto hardware. At any rate, a beautiful ’57 LG-2 came into the shop and the customer wants me to fix the case……..
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Super nice!
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Ya cool. That should work. Great to be able to experiment!
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Two options? 1) Put 250k resistors on hot leads from neck and bridge pick ups and leave middle pick up alone. 2). Add 250k volume pot for neck and bridge pick ups and use existing 500k volume pot for middle pick up. I don’t think you want to mess with middle pick up as customer likes the sound. You can mess with the others because those sounds are have yet to be determined and will be new to customer.
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Another repair God………..
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Ian’s on it! McMaster Carr’s got it…..
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Stewmac is great about replacing parts of their tools for free. They sent me missing parts for a neck jig.
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Another pic……
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A reproduction with that much wrong?!?! Did the thing go of a cliff in the back of a car without a seat belt, get thrown, and wash up 10 miles south?
