Straightforward headstock repair

[Freeman Keller]

There has been some chatter recently about broken headstocks, both Billy Billy and MarvelUndies have posted threads about this. Billy's was a pretty difficult repair, down on the neck stick and involving a lot of splintered wood. Here is a pretty straight forward break and not unreasonable for a home repair. Its an acoustic, sorry, but they break too.' Here was the break - ironically this is a scarf joined headstock but the break wasn't on the glue line (rarely is) but rather in fresh wood. Pretty clean

 

 

There are several approaches to this, none of them wrong. Because it is a clean break either hot hide glue or AR (Titebond) would work fine, there is also an argument for epoxy

 

- hot hide glue - very strong, very easy to clean up (hot water) but requires some degree of experience. You only get about 30 seconds to clamp everything once you apply the glue. Also, of course, it takes a glue pot (duh). If it was a vintage instrument I would use HHG for sure. I was tempted to use it here just to show off but figured nobody would learn anything

 

- AR (Titebond II) - good strong wood working glue, reasonable open time. The industry standard (now) for any wood to wood gluing. The seam poses potential problems for refinishing and if there was any splintering I wouldn't use it (it doesn't fill gaps)

 

- Epoxy (long setting, 5 to 24 hours. The five minute stuff isn't nearly as strong). Big advantages is that it fills any gaps and voids and as it squeeze out it kind of 'drop fills" itself. Also because the finish on this guitar is polyethylene and has some cracks around the break, epoxy will tend to fill those and can be buffed out.

 

Decided to use epoxy.

 

Now, trick number one, all around the break on both sides I've rubbed plain old sealing wax (parafin). Epoxy (or other glues) will not stick to it and I can get it right up to the edge of the break. Waxed paper would work too, but I just keep a little hunk of wax handy when I want to protect the finish. Trick number two is that white thing in the back ground - it is called UHMW, a kind of industrial plastic, and likewise, glue won't stick to it. I'll use it as the clamping caul

 

 

Now I can't believe I did this, I completely failed to take a picture of this all clamped up. Imagine if you can, I coated each side of the break with epoxy and tried to remove as much as I could - I don't want big gobs of this stuff. I clamped the UHMW to the broken headstock with a couple of small Irwin clamps, then slid it in place and held it really tightly while I put on about four more clamp. And the I took the following picture...

 

 

Anyway, I didn't go thru a lot of effort to clean up the squeeze out, I want that to fill the outside of the crack. Let it set for 24 hours, here is the back

 

 

and the front.

 

 

The epoxy has flowed into the tuner holes but thats easy to ream out., Its also pretty darn flat on the surface of the headstock. Scraped all the excess epoxy off (it comes off the wax prettty easily, sanded 800, 1000, and buffed with Meguiars #2 and 3. I'm not going to get anal about trying to hide the break but its strong, feels smooth and back to making music

 

 

 

 

[wankdeplank]

That was awesome, thanks Freeman. I never would have considered a repair of that magnitude before but this tutorial has given me reason to believe that maybe I could pull it off.

[Freeman Keller]

That's the only way to learn

[Les Paul Lover]

Thanks for sharing. Didn't know you could use epoxy for this sort of repairs too.

[Freeman Keller]

Took the Ibanez back to the shop, guess what they had for me

 

 

and the beat goes on.....

[billybilly]

Thanks for posting Freeman, interesting and educational.

[wankdeplank]

Ha, piece of cake!!!