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I am almost finished with the latest build, and had a good finish on it, had set the neck on Saturday night and then pulled it out of the clamps this morning. Man was I proud of the way it looked and it just wanted to ring even before I had any strings on it.

This is a EIR back/sides, Sitka top, Mahogany neck and has herringbone purfles and rosette. The Binding is oak, from an oak tree I cut down and milled into lumber about 2 years ago.

All was well until I started setting the frets. I had them all set in place...

Had a little trouble with the 13th fret due to some CA being in the fret slot, but got that cleaned out and proceeded to tap the rest of them in. All looked good except the last fret, which was slightly up and aparently didnt get set completely, so without thinking about using the steel caul I gave it just one more tap to set that last little piece in place.

Then I heard this strange sound.....

 

I didnt see anything wrong at first, but when I set the guitar down I could see what appeared to be a crack in the finish....

It wasnt a crack in the finish....

 

I'm not prone to outbursts of expletive language or panic attacks, but this one was over the top.... or was about the top anyway.

Looks like I am going to have some experience in removing dove tailed necks, fingerboards and tops.

Like I said, it started out so good, but I'm totally bummed right now. I at least have 3 other guitars in various stages of building that I can work on.

You can bet your sweet bippy that all fretting will be done BEFORE the fingerboard is attached from now on....

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Reguards,

Ken H

You hit the proverbial nail on the head with your statement "so without thinking about using the steel caul I gave it just one more tap". Lesson learned - never hammer frets into an unsupported neck or fingerboard extension. This top should be framed and hung on your wall for future reminders.

We all make bone-head mistakes like this. Lessons, hard lessons like this, are not easily forgotten. Welcome to the club.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

I have wondered about taking a hammer to such a delicate thing like a guitar, but I guess its done every day. That was a great looking top too. Great detail.

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Wisdom is justified by her children

Oouch! Sorry to see that. Better this happened now then ten days after you sold it. From the looks of that crack, it might have happened anyway just stringing it up.
chris

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Chris Oliver
Infinity Luthiers
...in the shop.

live every minute...

OUCH! That had to hurt.  Seems like most accidents occur in a moment of just "one more tap", "one more twist", "get just a little closer", or something like that.  I know one situation where a supervisor was leaving work, saw a valve open in a lagoon, dropped his safety gear on the ground, walked out on the pipe (36" pipe)  to close the valve, and he never got home.  Slipped off the pipe.  Dark, and no one else around. Found his gear the next morning and had to drag the lagoon.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Tim said it better than I could. We've all done things like this. You just have to keep calm, and do what you must do to fix it. Stuff happens. In the future, try thinking through your process each time you do something, and try to visualize what you're about to do and look for any potential problems before you use a hammer, or cut something etc. Go slow, and work thoughtfully and carefully.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Ken,
Oh man that's terrible. Sorry for your trouble.

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

By the way, Nice looking guitar!   

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Ouch!!!
I feel your pain

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

I started with electrics and proceeded to acoustics from there. 
I've always fretted with the fretboard off, using an arbor press and
cauls.



You've got some nice work there, its worth saving.  I'd check the
inside of the box to see if you have any brace damage; I'm not
convinced that you need to remove the top to fix this, if you have (or
can get) the right clamps.

We need a "Hari Kari" emoticon for just these types of occaision! I hate it happened to ya man!

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

Ken...welcome to our little club of horrors where the expletives ring constantly throughout the halls. Many of us are members and feel your pain.

I believe you may have just built yourself a personal guitar because it seems to me that it can be repaired to the extent that it will sound as good as any other. Just clamp it up and figure a way to make the broken edges match and then repair it with fish glue. Don't ask me how I know.

Hopefully, David Collins will chime in on more repair detalis. Good luck and let us know when you can laugh a little about this. In the meantime...cuss away!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Thanks for all of the consolations and praise for the build. This is a comissioned guitar. I hope I dont lose the comission.

I know I cant sell this guitar... ever....without removing the top and replacing it. I am thinking that it would be quicker and easier to just build another one than to try to replace the top on this one.

I may just try to fix it as is and just keep it. Believe it or not the guitar still reverberates as though nothing ever happened to it. When I get to feeling better about it I'll have a look and see what can be done.

The three others are a Sapele (figured) a Sycamore (awesome zoot!) and an ash.....all Dreadnaughts. I'll have to build one other IER dreadnaught before I can go back to the Prima's.

 

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Reguards,

Ken H

the top can be repaired and the guitar kept as as party/barbeque beater, or sold on ebay with its flaws revealed.

but don't reject the most used fretting technique simply because you carelessly and thoughtlessly tried a shortcut and came undone. that is just throwing out the baby with the bathwater. you must have given a rather heavy walloping.

there are advantages to fretting when the guitar is otherwise complete. otherwise those of us who do it that way wouldn't.

After reviewing your pictures and the way the top is cracked I am inclined to believe the top failed due to excessive run out. It can be seen at the center joint and is quite prominent. The way the top cracked, cross grain, and at what seems like a 45*-ish angle through the wood almost leads me to believe the wood had an internal flaw combined with excessive (and even quite possibly localized) run out. In my mind the wood should have cracked along the grain and not across the grain. This is a strange failure for just a light tap with a fretting hammer.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

I think Tim is right. It sure looks like it could have been an area of runout the way that broke.

I can not imagine the sinking feeling you had with that. My heart goes out to you. Good luck in the fixing.

[QUOTE=Tim McKnight] After reviewing your pictures and the way the top is cracked I am inclined to believe the top failed due to excessive run out. It can be seen at the center joint and is quite prominent. [/QUOTE]

I agree with Tim.
The big color/reflectivity change between the top halves points to the runout, which was revealed dramatically when you gave the top a 'shock'.
In a way, you're lucky you found this flaw in the top before the guitar got into the customer's hands.... just repeat that enough times and you may start to believe it! I do share your pain (as the famous say).
I'd have a good look at the rest of the tops from that lot as well.
I was recently in a shop where 4 of us were all 'setting' frets at the same time (on fingerboards glued to bodies). There was some over-enthusiastic hammering goin' on, and some of the backing weights weren't too effective. Believe me, those guitar bodies can usually take more abuse than we imagine.

Cheers
John

Since it is not an open split along grain, and if there is no offset on the rosette and the crack stops at the fingerboard, and with the easy accessed near the sound hole, maybe it's possible to glue it back with hide glue, spot sand, and refinished.

[QUOTE=Hodges_Guitars] I know I cant sell this guitar... ever....without removing the top and replacing it. I am thinking that it would be quicker and easier to just build another one than to try to replace the top on this one[/QUOTE]

Removing a top is not hard. If you can build a new body in the same amount of time that it would take to route off the top (5 mins), install a new one (which you'd have to make for the entire new body anyway) and rebind it, than I think your going to fast at something. Besides, being able to fix all of our mishap's is what makes us better builders and true Luthiers.

Sorry it happened, but sometimes it's the way we learn.

I like John Hall's signature line "Learn from others mistakes, you can't make them all yourself"

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Ken,
I'd be tempted to take my label out, glue the damaged area without removing the neck and give it to a young local guitar player that can't afford a nice guitar.

Thank you for posting this. All of us owe you for reminding us to pay more attention to runout.

Edit- After reading Rod's post above, that sounds reasonable. I'd be in shock and not thinking very clearly if I were you.

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

[QUOTE=crazymanmichael]

but don't reject the most used fretting technique simply because you carelessly and thoughtlessly tried a shortcut and came undone.  


there are advantages to fretting when the guitar is otherwise complete. otherwise those of us who do it that way wouldn't.[/QUOTE]

Oh man that is a real bummer.  I am sorry to see that happen to a beautiful guitar so close to being finished.

I am glad that Michael made these statements though because it opens the opportunity for me to ask what might be a simple question.
Why would you want to fret the neck, and more importantly the exension after the neck is set and glued?  I see that many if not most builders do it this way but I don't see the advantage and rather see a huge disadvantage which the original post shows.  I know fretting beforehand bows the fingerboard but that is pretty easy to work around so I am curious why fretting is so often done after the neck is on.  This is not intended to run down a method, rather I am a fairly new builder (4 builds) and I have never read the reason so it is a newb question.

Thanks

I agree with Rod.  A new top is not too big of a job and good experience.

My latest strategy for getting over the grief of screwing something up is to time myself doing the fix.  It's almost never as much time as I think.

One more possiblity, if you really don't want to fix it or if something else gets screwed up when taking it apart, turn it into a test body that you can try new tops/bracing patterns on.  That's an amazing learning experience.  When looks don't matter, it's really fast to put new tops on.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

Why would you want to fret the neck, and more importantly the exension after the neck is set and glued?

That reminds me.  I cast a vote for fretting the fb seperately.  Yes it bows the fretboard but, unlike fretting it on the neck, gives you the opportunity to straighten it back out.  And pressing frets in is a great way to avoid having those ends pop up that caused the problem to begin with.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

I was doing it the way I was taught to do it. I'm not sure of the reason for doing it this way, but I know the method of building guitars that I was taught works well and produces some outstanding guitars.

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Reguards,

Ken H