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I guess my friend got a little too excited at his show over the weekend: (sorry about the camera-phone pics)




I'm pretty new to these sorts of repairs, and while I've done a typical gibson headstock break, I haven't done one like this. My main problem is how I'm going to get a clamp around that headstock to hold the joint together. It's pointy (obvi) and there isnt a square angle anywhere on it. Possibly I'll get creative with rubber bands...

The other issue, which is hard to make out in the photos, but there's a noticeable chunk missing where the screw that holds the machine head was. What would you recommend for fill in such a place? I'm thinking it needs something pretty sturdy.

Any advice is appreciated! Thanks.

Edit: I should add, that he says he just wants it functional again, and he's not concerned with touchup or looks or any scarring left behind.

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Mike Hoenerhoff
Elderly Instruments

Take all the tuners off, trace the headstock shape onto another board, cut the headstock shape out, cut the board in half, you now have two square ends that you can use a clamp against and it will butt perfectly up against the headstock.

Yeah, like Jimmy said.

As far as the missing chunk, it's pretty small and beneath the tuner. You should be able to chisel the cavity square and smooth and glue a filler piece in there.

Steve

You can use the tuner holes to clamp it. with clamps or rope.

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

Ouch!
Nothing to add except that, lol.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I'm sure you could also glue it the same way you glue a scarf joint, two clamps holding the pieces down and a few more to bring them together. Fill the missing chunk with superglue and sawdust or epoxy.

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

This was my initial thought, but the sides aren't square; I'd have to cut the shape out while matching the bevel (which is different on each side - kind of a slanted trapezoid in cross section). Which is possible, but way more work than I want to do for free. I would however have the perfect jig if anyone were to break a jackson headstock in the same fashion.



This is something I didn't think of... it may be the ticket.

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Mike Hoenerhoff
Elderly Instruments

my solutions to problems are usually not too clever or elegant, and this is no exception, but: you just need to nip the corners off of some scrap wood, and approximate the angles, to get (roughly)parallel planes for the clamps to squeeze on....i drew a diagram, illustrating points for 2 clamps. you could use some rubber from an old innertube, or even paint the area with rubber cement, to get some friction to mitigate slippage:

Thanks for the input-

All clamping methods I tried made the joint slip - even when I tried angled blocks. The angle of the pieces and the angle of the wood grain just made it too awkward for clamping. The break was also very clean, and made for a really 'slick' contact surface between the pieces; so not much grip between the 2.

I went with the "Bung-load" of rubberbands method. Banded it across the break, then from tip down, also put some dowels in the tuner holes and banded it tight from all sorts of angles. Seems to be working ok... but I suppose I wont know until I string it up.

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Mike Hoenerhoff
Elderly Instruments

I'm tellin ya, should of glued it just like a scarf joint. Would've been a lot less messy and a lot more accurate.

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

one last maybe kinda radical idea would be to drill into the headstock perpendicular to the break, on the plane of the headstock, and insert a long rod into the hole to keep it from slip-shear force when you applied clamps...i had a broken metacarpal that looked like this headstock, and they had to pin it for the same reason, the slip/shear forces.
curious to see how it turns out

That's what I was going to try if this didn't work out.



Chameleon- I wasn't really sure what you meant. The only time I have scarf jointed anything was to join two ends of boards, etc to make one very long piece. Can you explain would you have done it in this case?

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Mike Hoenerhoff
Elderly Instruments

Basically I just meant to take the same technique commonly used to glue angled back headstocks which is to clamp both pieces to your bench, lined up as good as you can get them, and then use more clamps to clamp them together while gluing. Make sense? Just a simple technique to glue pieces of wood together that would otherwise slip and slide everywhere if not secured somehow.

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com