Official Luthiers Forum!

i must first appologise for not taking any pics - its been the busiest week ever for me and i wasnt originally going to post about it.

a customer brought me in his beautiful 2006 D35 for partial refret and finish repair on the underside.
Firstly, refret to 11th, using fret press went very well.
the sprayer dropped by to say hello, so i gave it to him before dressing to save the drive up there. The spraying also went pretty well with minor issue due to sanding out the dent and laquer absorbtion rate on the bare rosewood, only visable from some`angles though.

So i've got it back from the spray shop, and its on the bench getting final dressed before the customer collects in 5 days. I do my best to make the fretted section invisible, all looks well.
I'm virtually finished and pick it up to look at the underside and...(deep breath) the neck just opens up with a large crack .
once i pick my jaw up off the floor i glue and clamp it up...and rack my brains as to how it happened. I trust the sprayer 100%, no question there, he's a player and a collector, thats why I initially asked him several years ago. The refret was simple enough, no issues, cracking noises or frets that didnt want to go in. The fret dress was the same, rested on a large bag of shot for good support, no question of any pressure on the headstock at any time.

so... why or how did it happen?... I wish i knew!!

my feeling is that it must have taken a good fall in the case, tombstoned, whatever, at some point in its life and the internal fracture showed itself during the work.
The customer insists its never had a knock while he's had it, and i believe him. He was very gracious about it, paid for the aggreed work and had the neck refinish for free (i paid the sprayer for it). He could barely hide his real feelings though - I wouldnt have been any different.

My 2nd question is has anyone ever had anything like this happen? It's completely wrecked my week i can tell you!!

if it had been further up toward the headstock I could have used my freshly made David Collins headstock repair tool...but no...

cheers,
steve

_________________
www.theguitarrepairworkshop.com

I have nothing to add to help except shared empathy with your feelings. I have restored many an item and one day years ago I was restoring a print a customer brought to me. She said it was in a flood in her basement. The piece had a broken glass stuck to the print from the flood. So I prepared a tank of distilled water and floated the broken glass and print in the tank. Suddenly the tank turned dark gray as the ink from the print filled the water. I panicked and grabbed for the print to get it out of the water. The water then turned a combination red and gray. Red as I sliced my hands up trying to save the print.

Eventually I got the print out of the water and called the customer to explain the disaster. As with your client she too was understanding. She then told me that the carpet in the finished basement had just been cleaned. I can only assume the grease cutter in the cleaner turned the ink into carbon waiting to float off the paper.

That was 25 years ago and my stomach still does flips thinking about it.

Never seen anything like it, and have no idea what may have happened. Did you actually witness the crack as it was occurring and opening up while it was in your hands, or did you notice the crack there when you turned it over, having occurred at some point between then and the last time you saw or felt that area?

I'm also not entirely clear where the crack occurred. Was it the typical headstock style crack, open on the back of the neck/headstock, or the under-the-board style, with the open end around the nut fingerboard joint and held closed by string tension?

I've certainly seen cracks that may have lagged between the time of shock and the time they finally opened up, but only one I've ever seen that I feel may have occurred without any shock or impact at all. Sounds weird. It's frustrating, but sometimes you can never really reach a satisfyingly sure explanation.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

its the strangest thing, it was strung when he brought it in, it must have been held by the neck several times while being put in and out of the fret press, same for the spray shop.

After the fret dress was almost done i picked it up, walked across the workshop with it and felt what i thought was the edge of a strip of masking tape, looked at it and the split went from under the fret board bass side, down maybe 3 inches (towards the body) and under the apex of the neck and back up to under the fret board on the treble side.
...gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it...
it just happened out of the blue, no warning whatsoever. It was suddenly just there..in a big way.

The only way i can make sense of it is that it was an internal fracture laying dormant and exposed by having the work done on it.
If I wasn't 100% sure it hadnt taken a knock in my care I'd have bought him another guitar in a heartbeat, but I know it hadn't...or I'm as sure as I can be.
I would almost say its knocked my confidence, but that doesn't quite describe the feeling..its not disimilar mild grief - man i've got to try to lighten up!!

At the end of the day the customer was happy with the work that was done, obviously shocked an confused as to how it happened, but ultimately happy with the guitar.
He's going to write to Martin to ask their advice - I'll do everything I can to help him with that, the receipt for the work spells out what happened.

_________________
www.theguitarrepairworkshop.com

At the end of the day we have to remember that these are just guitars we are working on. It is unfortunate when these things happen, but not life threatening. Sometimes a bad piece of wood gets by a manufacturer and it doesn't show up for a few years. I think you handled the situation in the best possible way. It would bug me for a day, then I would accept it as one of life's mysteries and move on.

I was asked to do a setup for a guy the action was 1/2" high over the last fret! Then I had a crack appear, luckily not an expensive guitar, just sentimental value as it belonged to the guys deceased father in law bought in Morocco 60+ years ago. When I took the strings off a crack appears down the glue line of the top from the bottom of the soundhole to the first brace, ladder braces, this brace had come loose too, but luckily the crack stopped there. I don't know if I did the right thing when repairing it, but I laid a damp bandage over the crack until it had swollen shut then rubbed some titebond in, then re-strung and allowed to dry. I then got some sandpaper between the top and the brace to clean the joint then moistened it to allow the titebond to wick in and clamped shut all before I could start the setup!

When setting up the guitar I noticed the fingerboard was cupped so did my first stone and set on it rather than a polish, with a bolt on neck I thought it was gonna be an easy job then after all that I notices the neck seemed to be a three pine laminate, and over the time it was in my hands I had to re shim the neck to get the action where I wanted it to be and just explained to the guy but he was happy enough, as he'd never heard it played let alone played it, another thing I noticed with it was that the intonation was way out, but if you put a capo on the first fret it all sounded fine, and it really came alive when playing a song in G I assume it's something to do with the natural resonant frequency of the box, but is something I'd never experianced in an x braced instrument.

And after all I was happy too as it gave me well valued experience!

_________________
Formerly JJH

I learn more from my mistakes than my successes