Truss Rod Repair

[Dave F]

A few years ago I bought this '53 J50. The truss rod cover was buckled and when I check it out there were multiple spacers under the nut. Everything worked okay so I was not concerned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few years it started bugging me so I took everything off and saw that the threads needed clean up. It looked like the previous owner did not want to over tighten the nut so he used spacers.

 

StewMac sells a nice truss rod rescue kit but it seemed a little pricey to me so I made my own 10-32 die out of high speed steel and put a 1/4" hex on it so I could drive it with my truss rod wrench.

 

 

The thread cleaned up real nice

 

 

I put only one shaped washer underneath the new nut. Everything worked perfect.

 

 

Now there's no buckle in the truss rod cover

 

[Jon S.]

Nice job!!

[jedzep]

Awesome job, Dave. Very lucky that the rod wasn't seized or snapped off inside. Maybe you should rent out the die and pass it around a little for us old geetar buffs. I once had to rig up a clamping system to manually coax the neck on my '31 L0 to straighten. Miraculously, at a certain point of tightening on the clamp, the nut began turning. I'm nervously backing it off a little later today as I may have filed a little too much off the high E nut slot. It's buzzing at 3rd fret. Stupido!