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Trying to use the current (4th) guitar to learn how to correct mistakes...


There are at least three repairs visible which I'd like to cover a bit, so thinking of using Watco Red Mahogany Oil which I haven't used before. Any reason I shouldn't rout and bind the neck (maple) after the oil process?

Thanks, Roy

This is not a repair that a professional repair shop would ever do making any learning value debatable. Making a new neck since it's only at this stage would be recommended instead.

Good on you Roy for learning or wanting to learn repair work. I just got home from working all night in our commercial shop in Ann Arbor doing as many repairs as I could in 8 hours. It's what I do and I like to try to steer OLFers who are interested in repairs to the kinds of things that will come your way if you ever hang out a shingle. This is not one of them. If it's a labor of love for you I get that too and understand.

Fret work, set-ups, pup installs bridge reglues, brace repair, etc are all common things. What you have there is not a repair we would ever attempt and if we did it would be BIG bucks and have BIG opportunity costs for the time spent.

Binding after finishing is to be avoided at all costs, if possible. For the last couple of years I have done several repairs replacing binding on a finished instrument. I have come up with several techniques that make it possible, but it still is VERY difficult to do it without leaving some visible evidence behind.

Like Hesh we have been repairing things a long time. In this case a new neck is better than a repair

as for repairs Hesh and I have learned over the years what we can and cannot do. There is no cutting corners on repairs , nothing is worse than trying to repair a failed repair.

As for loose bindings , there are some neat tapes out there that are very thin and are something I use. The tape allows you some wiggle room and keeping the glue process down to a minimum in finish repair.
To learn repairs you do need to practice on lesser instruments. FRETS.COM is a great resource for repairs and I will be posting more repair videos in the neaer futures
Hesh and I are getting old so we need help , I have about 12 guitars in the shop for repair 2 high end martins that need new necks 4 resets 4 binding repairs and a few for frets and finish repairs.

Yup never boring . Learning patience in the finish area is important and know what you can and cannot use is also up there.

My Pap always said " you can learn a lot from people , even the village idiot . Sometimes knowing what not to do is better than knowing what to do."
My secret is COFFEE till 3 Beer after 4

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

John my friend since I work nights can I start the beer at noon?

LOL so can I I start at 6am

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Absolutely!!!

@flemsmith

So, You have heard from the pro's and they have some excellent advice... that is IF you are a professional repair shop trying to make a living. I know they have very good reasons to say your guitar isn't worth repairing. For them, they can't make money on a repair like yours so they would, as they say... "Show you to the door".

However I will give you a different point of view.

I have been repairing guitars for a good part of my life now (I'm 68). My motivation is not money, it is to learn. I call myself a "semi-pro" because I have (and do) charge people to repair their guitars, but the bulk of my work is doing things I want to do... I don't have a thriving repair shop or do I expect to have a shop full of guitars to pay the rent. I do this because I really enjoy learning new things and trying to perfect my skills.

So.. (No offense to the pro's) My advice is to continue on with your repair, even if it fails you will have learned something. You may also discover that is is very rewarding to figure out how to do something all on your own!

That is how I learned, Early on I would take almost any guitar that someone wanted to give me. I would study the problem, make a plan and just jump in. Lots of failures... but I learned and grew in my expertise of repairing guitars. After many years I am very confident in my abilities to take on almost any repair.

I like the fact that I can repair guitars that the "pro's" won't touch.. Just a couple of years ago I had someone bring me a guitar that the "pro" shop told them it was junk and they wouldn't touch it. The guitar was nothing special but it was the client's fathers guitar and she wanted it restored to playing condition even though she didn't know how to play. She wanted the guitar restored for purely sentimental reasons.

Just like the saying goes:

One mans Junk is another mans Treasure. So don't let the people that make a living at guitar repair tell you it isn't worth fixing...

What they mean "It isn't worth it to "THEM" to fix it"

Just my 3 cents...

Cheers,
Bob

P.S. To anyone that may be offended by my comments, I don't mean to put anyone down... It is just we have a different motivation in repairing guitars.

Thanks Barry for answering my question, and Bob for understanding where I'm coming from. Yesterday I could not reply, so assumed I'd been blocked. I'm 74, and have zero interest in selling any guitars or doing repairs to make money. My primary goal is to be able to leave some good quality guitars for the musicians in my family. So far I've only made one I would consider worthy, but each has shown improvement as I stumbled along. I've appreciated the folks who are so willing to help on this forum, it's a good site. The fourth is a different size, I will try to finish it with this neck to hear how it sounds and feels. If I like it, making another neck is not a real problem. Sorry to cause trouble. Roy

Pro repair guy here - No offense taken but you’ve got a somewhat one-sided perspective here. You seem to be laying responsibility for a declined job solely with the repairman. It’s a two-sided transaction.

If a repairman declines a job because he “can’t make money on it” then what we are really talking about is that the client cannot afford or will not be willing to pay the honest and true cost of the work. If they could or would pay, the repairman would be able to make money and could take the job. I’m talking here about the true cost of a substantial repair, labour, materials, opportunity cost to having something monopolizing a bench for 30 hours — the financial realities of the situation.

In declining jobs of this sort really we are just trying to save time and hurt feelings, because we know that the customer is not going to drop $3000 to repair a $300 guitar, even if it belonged to dear old uncle Billy. They may even take offence to a genuine quotation.
There are, of course, polite and respectful ways to decline which don’t include labelling anyone’s property as “junk”.

So if uncle Billy’s guitar ends up with an amateur repairman it is because the repair doesn’t make financial sense for both the customer AND repairman. Hence the customer must find someone who will do the work free or cheap.

There is another type of repair that ends up with the amateur repairman, and that is the guitar that is damaged in such a way that only an ugly fix is possible. Ugly fixes are dangerous for professionals because it’s the pros name and reputation attached forever to the work, and reputation is all you have in this game.

Ugly fixes are not a big deal to the amateur - he has no real skin in the game and there is no expectation that his work will meet a professional standard, regardless of his actual skill level - and there are some very skilled amateurs out there.

Finally, myself and almost every repair person I know are not primarily driven by the motivation to make money as you claim. Let me tell you, repairing musical instruments is absolutely one of the worst ways ever invented to try and make money

We do it because we desperately love it, we are fascinated by musical instruments, by a desire to make them work as well as possible. So much so that we’ve chosen, despite the financial tough-sledding involved, to make it our vocation. Something we can spend the bulk of our time doing, rather than a diversion for evenings or weekends. The opportunity to see, study, to peek inside more instruments in a year than an amateur sees in decades. Many of us have abandoned more lucrative, more secure careers in other fields to do so.

You hit it on the mail, Josh. I couldn't have said it better.

Every job here gets an estimate, so the customer gets to decide whether he is comfortable with the cost or not. It's really his call, not mine. I definitely will make recommendations on whether to go with a repair or not, explaining what cost/benefit ratio is at play, but I have and will do extensive projects on lesser instruments that are significant to the owner, such as family-owned guitars. Those seem to have come out from the woodwork since the pandemic hit.

But it is always up to the customer to decide. I'm afraid the "real ugly repair" scenario is an exception, as the shop's reputation is on the line, as you said. The Asian mystery glue and joint problem is another that gets voted down by most everyone, me included. Here it's the economics that are at work…


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

_________________
Pierre Castonguay

Well spoken, Josh. PREACH!

Of course, I've told people that their wrecked Harmony flattop was a flowerpot. Or to simply get out. But that's just part of my special charm.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I actually don't have a one sided view. Your statement is pretty much exactly what I was saying about refusing work. The "Show you the Door" comment came directly from one of the pro's on this forum. I am sure you all have read it before.



I think you are taking a one sided view of amateur repair people.... I would gladly put my skills up against any pro. You can't judge amateur repair people, just as you can't judge the Pro's. There are good and bad in all professions.


So to stem a lengthy discussion we are going so far off topic that this doesn't address the original question.

The point I was making is exactly what I stated in my first post.



He asked about repairing his mistakes and he got a reply telling him no repair shop would ever do it, and he should just replace the offending part. (Not what the OP was asking.)

I didn't mean to offend some of you, which it seems I have done from the replies.


Peace Out...

Bob

I still can't quite figure out what the OP's issue here is? That neck looks like it's been stripped, did stripping it expose those splints in it? Are those splints holding?

Or when the OP says (4th) guitar as in this is your 4th guitar, you messed up the neck and want to learn how t o repair it?

My advice would be, if everything is held together and you really want to hide it then as the Stones said, paint it black.

But if that was my 4th guitar and I made a mistake like that I would scrap it and start over.

Not sure who can help with this....

I got a PM from flemsmith saying he is unable to post a message. (He can PM... so he is logged in).

He has been trying to expand on his first post, but can't.

As I understand it Lance is pretty busy and doesn't come around much.

How should he proceed.

I told him the basic stuff about ad blockers and such but I think he needs an Admins help.

Bob

I experience occasional glitches where I can’t post for a period of a day or so. Eventually it seems to resolve itself. In the meantime if he PMs one of us could post on his behalf.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I answered his PM a few hours ago but have not heard back yet, so hopefully he gets it sorted.

Cheers,
Bob

I have not had this happen to me though I have seen the forum appear in Chinese and other languages before LOL!

I would suggest he log out clear all the cookies and site cache for this website and log back in.

He may want to try a different browser too. Or see if he can log in using a private window.

I only had the posting problem that one day. The next morning everything was normal, probably shouldn't have said anything about that (reactionary much?). As far as the status of the neck, it is for my fourth guitar; I loused up the slotting processes pretty badly, and ended up buying the LMI fixture that let me do a better job. I've already started on another neck using the fixture with better results, but it's for a 12 fret. I realized as I was shaping this neck that this is only the second neck I've built from scratch, I bought a couple in the rough cut stage, which was probably a mistake in terms of learning. Since I'm building bolt on necks I don't mind replacing it in the future. For now I'm just wanting to continue with this one and see what I think about how it sounds, plus I have yet to do a perfect job on either the binding or the finishing processes. I want to see if my results are better on those steps before I start into another neck. Sorry to have caused all the confusion.

Certainly no offence taken on my part. Just a thumbs-up to Josh's post.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

_________________
Pierre Castonguay

No need to apologize at all. Carry on and good luck. You won't be able to hide that unless you paint it but it has a nice wabi-sabi vibe to it.

Hi Roy,
Confusion is part of the fun!
We are a mix of Pros and Amateurs, with widely (sometimes wildly) varying experience and interests. As such it is sometimes hard to gage what the final result the original poster wants to achieve. If you wait long enough you will generally find the answer you are looking for, and also a few answers that are from different perspectives which have equal validity for the people they are aimed at.
Frequently things I cobbled together for my own use I would never have sent out as a professional cabinetmaker.
As the group gets older some of our skins get thinner, both physically and figuratively, but don't let that keep you from asking questions

Hey Roy,
Glad you got your posting issue sorted and are back

If you are having problems with finishing there are a few things you could do to improve your skills. I would suggest looking into using shellac. It is the same finish as they use for French Polishing (FP) In case you don't know, FP is just applying shellac using a piece of cloth and is time consuming and finicky. However you can apply shellac with a brush and then lightly sand between coats. You probably won't get a final finish like FP, but it is pretty easy to do and will get you started so you can refine your finishing at a later date. The ultimate goal is to put as little finish on a guitar as you can since finishes will dampen the sound. Oil is another easy finish (as you know from using it), but some say oil finishes dampen a guitar too much. Others love it for it ease of use. I personally only use oil finish on the back of necks but that is just me.

As for the neck you have that you are replacing, It might be a good experiment to try and repair that original one to see if you can. On the headstock, you could cut some filler pieces to fill in the Tuner slots and re-do them. I would widen them out enough to get clean edges, trace off patterns for the fillers, glue them in and then just re-cut them.

On the fret slots you can fill the old ones in and re-do them with your new jig. These are things you can do that I am sure will improve you repair skills and since you are making a new neck you will have the option of using that neck for a different guitar or just for practice.

If you can post other pictures of what you would like to repair it will make it easier for us to understand what you would like to accomplish.

Good to see you made it back.

Cheers,
Bob

Filling and redrilling some of the tuner shaft holes is probably a good idea, the slots themselves would be a lot trickier at my skill level. I've got some non guitar issues that will take me some time and are more pressing right now, so that will give me some time to think. I've never actually used the Watco on a complete guitar; I did use it on one neck I was having stain troubles with. My last guitar came out pretty nice with lacquer, I want to stick with that for now til I feel I understand the process details, but at my work rate I'm a good bit away from starting finish work. I'll be back...Roy

Roy,
If you are already using lacquer then that is probably the most forgiving finish there is. So If you don't mind the fumes then I would suggest you stick with it. Lacquer was my "go-to" finish for years, but as of late I have been trying to migrate way from it and to other less toxic finishes.

Taking a step back and thinking about how to repair something is probably the best thing you can do. Weigh different options and choose the best way to proceed.

If you have any questions you know there are a lot of people here that are more then willing to help.


Cheers,
Bob