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" REPAIR " Broken neck of Gibson SG how torepair ???? HELP


CrackLevent

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Hey guys need your Help =D>

 

got this Gibson SG from something about 70's with slightly broken neck, want to repair it.

 

Got any advise?????

 

 

 

My questions:

 

1 - Can I do it by myself??? If yes how and what do i need for it??

 

2 - I live in Germany (Frankfurt at Main), maybe you know some place nearby my town where I can do it? =D>

 

 

 

Hope someone can help me

 

THX

 

 

 

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That's a slight crack???

 

I could be wrong about this, I am sure someone with more knowledge than myself will correct me if I am.

But unless you can spread it open enough to really get a lot of wood glue in there, you may need to finish the break yourself.

Something else you might be able to do is make something to inject the glue in there kind of like the straw on a can of WD-40 but bigger. If you can't get enough glue in there though I doubt it is going to hold when you string it up again.

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How are your woodworking skills ? As TinFish says, the key to a good repair is getting the glue deep into the crack. Here is a jig used to carefully spread the crack. It's an Ibanez, but you get the idea.

 

http://www.ibanezrules.com/tech/setup/crack_neck.htm

 

He uses a thin strip of mylar, but you could use even thinner plastic such as the wrapper from one of those crisp multi-packs. (You wouldn't want to use an actual crisp packet due to the grease). Hold the plastic either side of the headstock, and work the glue in. You can make your 'crack jig' vertical and let gravity help to pull the glue in.

 

It's a good idea to do a 'dry run' and make sure you can clamp together the area without causing damage. You could use hide (animal glue), or titebond. Hide glue sets fast as it cools, and is not so convenient. Note that although the Ibanez guy takes the clamp off after 15 minutes, Titebond's own guidelines are 30-60 minutes clamping for an un-stressed joint, but 24 hours for a stressed joint. I would regard the neck / headstock as a stressed joint ! Note that overtightening squeezes out the glue.

 

The repair in the projectguitar link is weak. This is in effect a glued butt joint. This type of repair requires splints.

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Great article (aside from a lot of grammar and spelling errors), I have an old mexican Fender Strat with a similar crack in the neck, although mine is in the middle of the neck near 12th fret or so. I always thought I would just order a new neck from Stewmac or something at some point, but I think I am going to give this a try. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

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My '73 broke nearly the same way. It had been broken when I got it, and not glued too well - the wood wasn't quite joined up all the way. So when I re-broke it myself a few years later, I took it as an opportunity to fix it right. I cleaned out the old glue and used carpenter's glue. Glued it, clamped it together _tight_, and I don't think I touched it for a week. I was afraid to. Anyway, after that, I sanded down the crack area till I couldn't feel it any more, finished the area, sanded some more, etc., till it felt and looked right. Except for a tiny chip of wood that was missing at the tip of the crack (now filled by glue, I think), you'd never know. That was 15 years ago, and it's never given me a problem.

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Get the glue as far in the crack as you can and then clamp it shut. Take the clamp off and make sure the glue has worked up into the crack as far as it needs to go. If it's not, glue and clamp it again. The glue will be forced into the crack when you apply pressure with the clamps.

 

After you clamp it up, be sure to wipe away any excess glue with a wet rag. Don't leave any residue if you can help it. The glue will change the color of the wood if it dries on the surface, since it will be sucked into the pores. Keep wiping until you are sure it's clean.

 

Any good wood glue will work well. I used Elmers for over 20 years as a finish carpenter. Believe me, the wood may break somewhere else, but the glued crack will never break again.

 

Leave it clamped for 2 days, and wait about a week before restringing. If you do this right, you will barely be able to see the crack.

 

Best of luck.

 

(Wood glue is water based, so it's much easier to deal with, and to clean off the surfaces than the exotic glues, and it will hold as well as any of them.)

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Hey Guys !!! :D/

 

THX for your advises, they are really good, but I gave the guitar to a pro.

 

It will cost me something about 120€ (it is not much) so it is better he'll do it.

 

It will be done at the end of next week.:-k/

 

I will upload some pictures so you can see how it looks like when it's done.

 

One more time THX!

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Hey Guys !!! :D/

 

THX for your advises' date=' they are really good, but I gave the guitar to a pro.

 

It will cost me something about [b']120€[/b] (it is not much) so it is better he'll do it.

 

It will be done at the end of next week.:D/

 

I will upload some pictures so you can see how it looks like when it's done.

 

One more time THX!

 

He's gonna do exactly what I said, but I understand why you'd trust a pro.

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Hey Guys !!! :)/

 

THX for your advises' date=' they are really good, but I gave the guitar to a pro.

 

It will cost me something about [b']120€[/b] (it is not much) so it is better he'll do it.

 

It will be done at the end of next week.:)/

 

I will upload some pictures so you can see how it looks like when it's done.

 

One more time THX!

 

Like the others have said, if you aren't 100% confident in doing it yourself, probably a good move.

 

Looking forward to seeing it all fixed up and ready to rock!

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I've been looking into this again, and found drawbacks with using carpenter's glue / Titebond. These glues soften at lower temperatures than hide glue. A guitar left in the case in a car in the sun can get hot enough for the glue to melt. The tension of the strings then does the rest, pulling the repair apart. Hide glue can resist these temperatures.

 

I found a video on Youtube of a Dean headstock being repaired with superglue. A search revealed that this is not recommended - reasonable I thought...but then a respected pro repairs a mandolin headstock with superglue (thin to penetrate the crack, and thick for the rest). This had previously been repaired with Titebond, and had failed when the mandolin got hot. I found another repair using a combination of superglue, epoxy (as a gap filler) and hide glue.

 

These findings overturned my view of Titebond and yellow carpenter's glue being suitable for high stress areas on guitars.

 

Look after those necks !

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I've been looking into this again' date=' and found drawbacks with using carpenter's glue / Titebond. These glues soften at lower temperatures than hide glue. A guitar left in the case in a car in the sun can get hot enough for the glue to melt. The tension of the strings then does the rest, pulling the repair apart. Hide glue can resist these temperatures.

 

I found a video on Youtube of a Dean headstock being repaired with superglue. A search revealed that this is not recommended - reasonable I thought...but then a respected pro repairs a mandolin headstock with superglue (thin to penetrate the crack, and thick for the rest). This had previously been repaired with Titebond, and had failed when the mandolin got hot. I found another repair using a combination of superglue, epoxy (as a gap filler) and hide glue.

 

These findings overturned my view of Titebond and yellow carpenter's glue being suitable for high stress areas on guitars.

 

Look after those necks ! [/quote']

 

Not to be argumentative, but it's called wood glue for good reason. If used correctly, you won't find anything that will work better with wood.

 

I've used it to bind everything from formed stairway rails to musical instruments and never had a failure that could be attributed to the glue itself.

 

You might want to take a tour of most any good guitar manufacturer. You'll see that the most widely used adhesive for joining wood is wood glue. They would include Gibson, Martin, Fender, Ibanez, and the list goes on and on.

 

Sure, they use specialty glues for certain jobs, like inlays and such, but for joining most any two pieces of wood, just guess what they use, and that includes joining the body slabs, neck pieces, and fret boards. You don't get much higher stress than the fret board to the neck.

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Most wood Glue used on Guitars come apart with steam heat. A cappuccino maker works great (ya know the thing on the side used to steam milk) for pulling apart set necks. Any **** left in the car is just plain stupid. You can't even leave your dog in your car if its 80 degrees out and in most states it's legal to punch a persons car windows out if a dog is found inside left alone.

 

Did they pass a law yet that says its o.k. to punch out a guitar owner and take his guitar if he leaves it in a car with the windows closed. They should.

 

Normal yellow Carpenters glue is most commonly used for good reason.

 

It's strong and it comes apart when needed at about 220 degrees.

 

If you want to never ever take something apart and what a stronger Bond, use Epoxies

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Not to be argumentative' date=' but it's called wood glue for good reason. If used correctly, you won't find anything that will work better with wood. [/quote']

 

PVA is also called wood glue, but that doesn't mean it's the best for the job. I don't advocate leaving a guitar in a hot car, but it's some reassurance that that if a guitar should encounter high temperatures, hide glue will continue to hold.

 

You might want to take a tour of most any good guitar manufacturer. You'll see that the most widely used adhesive for joining wood is wood glue. They would include Gibson' date=' Martin, Fender, Ibanez, and the list goes on and on. [/quote']

 

I know they use aliphatic resin for joining wood.

 

You don't get much higher stress than the fret board to the neck.

 

I'm afraid you do. It results in broken headstocks....

 

Body slabs - due to the large pieces of wood and large glue surface area, these are low stress joints. Neck laminations - string tension spread evenly over the long pieces, and plenty of surface area = low stress. Fretboard - a massive glueing surface area of around 76 square inches ! And of course, the neck and fretboard reinforce each other. So where is the 'really' high stress area ? The transition between neck and headstock with the short grain.

 

If we were to take the weakest line in the wood grain, and measure the surface area in the common break region, we find that the surface area is only around 4 square inches. Quite a difference, 76 vs 4 square inches. This is why headstocks break.

 

At Gibson, they are not repairing broken headstocks on the shop floor. They are joining nice pieces of wood with large glueing areas with strong aliphatic resin. The problems start once the guitars leave the factory...

 

Both Hide and aliphatic resin are very strong, with low creep properties. I'm just pointing out that one is more stable than the other.

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