Repairing a childs guitar.

[normh]

I went out to empty the trash and found this in the trash can.

Nina, the tenant upstairs, the typical welfare mom, has several young kids and cannot afford a terrible lot.  She threw this guitar away after someone put steel strings on a guitar built for nylon strings, and then over tightend the strings.  This snapped two dowels holing the neck into the block and seperated the back from the sides.  Apparently, the guitar had had a loose neck for a while because the tongue of the fretboard is also warped.

You can see from the clamp, I am in the process of repairing the guitar.  When it is done, I will return put the correct strings on it and give it back to Nina for her children.  They do not know that I retrieved it from the trash can.  I think it will be a nice surprise.

[normh]

Now that the back is properly attached to the sides, the next thing to do is to reglue the freboard tongue onto the neck where it is pulling away.

I worked glue into the crack between the fretboard and the neck.  I then grabbed my fret leveling beam to use as a mounting and truing surface and clamped the neck to the beam.  While I was at it, I looked at the neck to check for torqueing.  While I did not see any that could not be corrected with a fret leveling, I think it is a good idea to correct what little there is.  Once the glue cures, I will place the neck under a heat lamp, in this case, a 100 watt incadescent lightbulb, for 24 hours and tighten the clamp a 1/4 or less turn every couple of hours.  Then I will turn the heat off and let the neck cool for 24 hours.

I will also be creating this in the DIY section to stop hijacking this thread.

[normh]

I have been fairly busy working on a piece of computer code.  Finally became fed up with chasing a particularly difficult bug and decided to spend some more time on this guitar.

I removed the clamp holding the neck to a fret leveling bar and began a neck set.

I began this by cutting off the sole remaining neck peg and cutting down the remaining broken pegs as close to each surface as I could with a hobby knife.

We can see that there is a fair amount of work that needs to be done in order for the neck to be seated properly on the body of the guitar.  Seating the neck, or reseating the neck, basically involves inserting sandpaper between the neck and the body, placing the neck into a proper position, and pulling the sandpaper out.  The process is roughly the same if you ar reseating a more expensive guitar that is dovetailed - you would have to insert the sandpaper into differing areas in order to set the neck and obtain as flush of a surface as is possible.

Setting the neck is a time consuming process because each time you remove the sandpaper, you have to remove the neck, resettle the sandpaper, and reposition the neck.  After 45 minutes to an hour, i figured that I had the surfaces mated close enough.

I then drilled the remainer of the pegs out and cut new dowels to peg the neck.  After cutting the dowels, I test fitted the neck to insure that it properly mated and seated.  It did.

In a day or two I will glue the neck.  When it sets and cures, I will reglue the tongue of the fretboard.