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How severe the damage, how to do some minor cosmetic repair. The guitar in question for this example is an Epiphone Les Paul Studio. I actually bought this guitar about a year ago for the very purpose of practicing neck repair - as it already had a broken neck. <br>I have purchased all the guitar parts from https://faberusa.com/ - The online store of genuine guitar parts.
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Introduction How severe the damage, how to do some minor cosmetic repair. The guitar in question for this example is an Epiphone Les Paul Studio. I actually bought this guitar about a year ago for the very purpose of practicing neck repair - as it already had a broken neck.
Start To Repair In the case of the Epiphone, they are great, affordable guitars... And with these broken neck ones (depending on the nature of the break), these can be a great deal for someone with the time and tools to fix them. And if you happen to bust the top off your Gibson ES335, that can be fixed too!
Tools & Supplies Clamps, Glue, Water - for cleanup, Paper towels, Little artist paint brush Something to hold the neck up - I have a little tripod thing that I won at a recent demonstration thing. A full roll of paper towels works very well also.
Inspect The Damage What interesting to note is that the previous fix held up just fine. The wood failed (again), not the old glue joint. But what that also tells me is that the wood on this neck is fairly weak and would split just as fast and clean if it gets dropped again. The split paint and paint/wood interface might present a challenge depending on the guitar. But it this case, it did just fine with wood glue.
Side Note About Wood Strength and Stain Penetration When I looked closely at the wood, I noticed that the primary break seemed to occur along a plane that sucked up the stain rather deep. This MIGHT indicate that the wood was dryer and maybe weaker along this plane that the neighboring planes. The wood next to the truss rod opening broke on a slightly different plane. Perhaps is was stronger? Assuming that the break happened how I described in step 1, the truss rod area would have split first... Not so strong after all! So micro-examining the wood structure is probably not worth worrying about for this.
Dry Fitting Just hold the pieces together and see how they will fit. This guitar was pretty straight forward - just hold it together and you're there. On other guitars you might need to insert part at an angle, jiggle it around a little or clean up some nasty spots on the wood.
Glue Application You don't need gobs and gobs of glue. The key is to get good even distribution on both pieces. I like to use a small brush to get the glue in the cracks/crevices and get rid of excess glue. The goal is to get enough glue that everything inside is coated within the repair - but not so much that it's a total mess to clean up the outside.
Assembly - Clamping - Cleanup The major parts are: Hand assembly, Initial clamping, Clean up, Additional/final clamping, More clean up.
Take Off the Clamps and Minor Clean Up I give these sorts of joints two solid days to dry and cure before I remove the clamps. But realistically, you only need to wait 12 hours or so (read the glue directions) if you're in a hurry. Theoretically, you could string up the guitar and start playing if you wanted! The joint is solid and will hold the tension. Everything after this is just cosmetic. Get detail information Here - https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-repair-a-broken-guitar-neck-headstock/
Wood Finish Work For this repair, I just use a little crayon type scratch filler and buff it down. My goal is to make the repair smooth to the touch... not invisible to the eye. It took me about a week to do and it ended up being very noticeable. To be fair, the previous break was missing some edge pieces when I bought it.
Headstock Cleanup/Finishing • Clean up the glue. • Get it cleaned up and leveled with wet/dry sandpaper. • Black Kiwi shoe polish.
Conclusion After such a traumatic injury and repair, I was amazed that the guitar held it's intonation! The only adjustment I needed to do was a quarter turn of the truss rod to get the neck curvature where I wanted it! I have purchased all the guitar parts from FaberUSA.com- The online store of genuine guitar parts. I restrung with Ernie Ball Regular Slinkies (10-46) to normal tuning.
