Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello,

After glueing and doing some work in this archtop European spruce soundboard has emerged a thin (1 x 25 mm) resin pocket. I think that a thin piece of spruce with some HHG would fill the pocket, I don’t want discard the wood. Ahy suggestion?

Thank you!

It likely will show. It's very difficult to make an invisible sound board repair on unfinished wood. If you are going to paint the instrument by chance it won't matter.

This is when some folks sunburst things to hide imperfections not that sunbursts are always done for that reason. I love them personally.

I often find resin pockets. If they are thin I leave them. If they are big I leave them. If they make holes through to the back, I patch them from the inside, after it is finished to size.

Take a curved gouge on the inside, and make a cut through the void. Then use the same gouge to make a patch in a piece of spruce. Chalk fit the patch, and glue it in place. It will look like a little oval plywood patch on the inside. On the outside it will be visible, but it will be stable. I suppose you could fill it with epoxy if the void was large and deep.

The guitar is made of wood! Wood isn't perfect.

I have knots, and bark in my maple cello back. That is what was there.

I've heard that wood with resin pockets is good wood. Surprisingly, I've had a lot of good wood.

_________________
Why be normal?

Thank you. Sunburst is good idea but the pocket is in the center. The pocket is parallel to the grain, is like a one dark grain 1” long

I guess maple knots isn't the same. Here is a viola resin pocket that needed a patch behind it:

_________________
Why be normal?

Congratulations for your works! I like your philosophy about wood. The soundboard is a good quality piece, I like this wood, perfectly quartersawn and nice grain. I will use your idea but just with one grain. Thank you!

Mine has just the same shape and size

Basically, you do a long 'eye' patch. Find a piece of open grain spruce with the right color, so that the patch is all soft earlywood, without a grain line down the middle. I like to cut them in from the back. Put diamond studs across either end on the inside when you're done. With care these can be unobtrusive, and solid, although I'd avoid having one in line with the sound post on a fiddle. No sense pushing your luck...

One of the most famous guitars of all time, Julian Bream's Romanillos, had pitch pockets of similar appearance. No effect on sound, playability, or durability.

_________________
Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

Good point, how about a solid color, I'm fond of black top instruments and have built a bunch of them.

Wanted to mention that I agree that a pitch pocket likely has no quantifiable impact on how an instrument will sound. Sadly though we have this thing called market perceptions and that can push us to a level of perfection difficult to obtain. That is if we care, we don't have to care and can of course do our own thing.

I make a lot of nuts. Each one is hand made, hand crafted, takes me nearly two hours.... and once in a while toward the end a void opens up and the nut is ruined. Throw it away and start another one and I'm out the time in the first one. Sometimes when it matters we just have to start over too with no way around it.

So I'm always asking my self how will I feel about this later and I end up doing it over. And then there is paint

I absolutely love so called “piano lacquer black” on an archtop. The way that the light shines off the complex curves of the arch is beautifully highlighted. Perhaps if I had a beautiful piece of wood with beautiful figure I would hesitate, but look at this as an opportunity. This piece is exactly what high gloss solid paint is for.

If you really want a natural finish, i would use a different blank. A repair on a new guitar would drive me crazy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

If you are building the guitar for yourself you might just accept it as a beauty mark, similar to the mole on Monroe's face. Sometimes leaving things as they are is better than contriving to fix a "defect" and drawing attention to it.

Here's one that worked out pretty well, using a v-parting tool to harvest a patch from cutoff wood from the top. I maintained the orientation with respect to runout and used HHG.







It is visible though when the light hits it just right.

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

That’s a good job Pat. I’ve done similar repairs but more for screwups than pitch pockets.
Tom

Nice one Pat. I've used the gouge trick for a long time and it works well.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thank you! The pocket is in the surface, only 3 mm inside the top.

Thank you very much for the advice! Is a good sollution and is good to know. But being the guitar for my own use I will be tolerant with myself [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND COLD SWEAT]

Thank you. Is a good idea. The problem is that the resin was liquid and I have to extract and now is a small hole in the top.

Thank you for the pictures! Excellent work. I will try that.