The Hub

I need some suggestions from the many great repair senseis out there.The customer is fine with a structural repair and not concerned about making it invisible. I told him you will see anything I do. He was fine with that and has a budget of between $700-1000. It's a clean break. nothing missing, It closes tightly.. I was thinking either 1) the generic double splines one on either side of truss rod and touchup as best I can. Or 2) the ab…

Sure - we love talking about the 'clams'. In fact, when I discovered that "Ian Hated Guitars," I knew I had found a kindred spirit. BUT - every once in awhile, you hit a homer. Allow me to share mine and you can do likewise: You've just done a touch up and it takes you several seconds to find it. WooHoo!

I working through a long top crack repair on a c.1964 Fender Newporter and need to do a little touch-up on the clear coat. The top coat is matte over a do-do brown stained mahogany top, I'm guessing around a 10-20% reflectivity. Questions: 1. What top coat product did Fender use on these? 2. What should I use that has great self-leveling qualities and will melt into the old finish? <>

I'd like to add some cherry nitro to this spot but how do I avoid the dark line around the perimeter that typically forms from adding a touch-up? I.e., what is the best strategy for blending what i'm adding to what is there?

I have a Favilla Classical guitar on the bench, in for a bridge reglue. This is a low to mid-range classical guitar, made circa 1960, and it's an heirloom guitar for the customer, he basically wants it back in playing shape. The story is that he went away on vacation, and when he returned the bridge had delaminated from the top and took a fair amount of finish with it. It also appears that someone attempted to glob on superglue at some…

Hi There, I've seen a number of jigs, Some seem like they might work with specific size frets but we all know that even same sized frets have some variances depending batch and where on the line it came off the spool. No matter how i do it I seem to scrape the bottom of the fret trying to make it perfectly flush. I've considered using small rotary round burr or cylinder and only touching the tang so if it does go to deep its…

Has anybody here done the Mohawk wood touch up and repair workshop? Kind of expensive, wondering how much of it would be useful in guitar world.

I have a Taylor Acoustic in for a setup and I had a couple of questions: 1. My main one is how you would go about gluing the label back on? I'm probably overthinking it but I'm curious if there's a universally recognized way of doing this? 2. I have some very minor finish damage which I'm not planning on touching, but I am curious how one would go about repairing it. Would this be a case of drop filling lacquer? What would be the…

I have repaired numerous top crack on this instrument built by a customer at a guitar building camp. The bridge was off and warped. That has been addressed. After gluing with hide glue and splining the crack these top two did not closed as much as I would have liked. The bigger is about 1/32 at the widest and the other about 1/64. The crack is tight at the bottom. If I can help it I would like to fill it rather than spline it as I have…

Hi, I have a 1950's Gibson LG-3 that's had some poor work done to the spruce under the area of the bridge where the spruce has pulled away and or been sanded excessively. It's missing about .020-0.30 thou of spruce and I'm wondering/looking for advice about how to go about splicing in a thin piece of spruce before I re-glue the bridge. Please see pictures attached. My main questions are: glues for the patch, should the patch be mitered…

Does anyone have experience and advice for touching up the color of a Les Paul Goldtop? It looks to be a light sparkle. Not looking to finish the entire top. Thanks!

I watched the Guild F-20 video (https://dev2.loothgroup.com/groups/repair-and-restoration/forum/topic/cracker-x-braces-on-guild-f20/#post-60310) with great interest since I've been working on a Gibson L-3 with a similar problem. A little back story - The original repair request was to address a small pickguard crack on the sound hole side. After peeking inside, I saw 5 loose brace ends on the treble side. Still a pretty standard repair…