Official Luthiers Forum!

I received a nice solid wood Japanese Kizan classical which is apparently a fairly rare, but not terribly valuable instrument. The customer brought it in to fix some cracks in the top. When I looked inside the guitar I found 5 or 6 .125"x1.5x3 or 4" pieces of both spruce and plywood plates that I assume were glued in as reinforcements to the top. I've tried to loosen them with a bridge plate removal chisel, but the glue job is superlative. My experience with Japanese instruments is to heat up the glue enough to loosen them will ruin the finish or tear apart the top. I see two alternative--fix the cracks and string it up or replace the top (not cost effective). I've included some pictures which may or may not give an idea of what I'm dealing with. Looking for alternatives I haven't considered.

Did you try to heat up the patches before using the bridge removal chisel? That is the way a bridge plate has to be removed. It requires special tools consisting of a thick block of brass or aluminum with a handle that can be heated up and placed inside the guitar against the patch. To prevent damage to the finish you can lay a wet towel on the finished side.

Wow. Crazy big reinforcements. Since they are over the top, I wonder if they were stuck in there with a glue other than Titebond or hide glue. If it was CA, that would be a permanent frowny face as removal of the plates would probably do more damage. It's a conundrum, and I think your suggestion of simply fixing the cracks from the top might be appropriate in light of price of the instrument.

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