Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi everyone

Hope you’re all doing well!

I built this guitar a year ago and it was a sunburst with a nitro clear coat. I’ve noticed a couple of cracks showing up this past week. I did transport the guitar from the house to work to do some work on the frets and the neck a couple of weeks ago. Not sure if that’s why this is happening.

Should I just leave it alone and live with the cracks/checking or is there a way to fix it without too much difficulty.

All the best

Carlos

Fixing them will look worse that they do now.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

What Chris said!
Nitro lacquer will crack, it’s the way it is.

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Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers!

Nice looking burst, even with some checking!

Hey Carlos,

I have a Gibson that I replaced the top on a few years back and had the same type of situation and wasn't sure if it was the wood or the finish. To find out I put a mirror inside the guitar so I could see the area. Then lightly wet the cracks with mineral spirits (it takes longer to dry) and look at the area and see if you see wet lines under the top. If not, the cracks are only in the finish. If you see wet lines, mark them with something and let it dry. You can cut small cleats and glue them along the crack (plenty of tutorials on doing that around). That should keep them from creeping.

On my Gibson, I had about 3 or 4 small cracks and one turned out to be the wood so I put a cleat over it.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Bob

Thank you for the feedback! I’ll leave it as is for now.

We saw similar on a couple of our guitars and ended up refinishing them under warranty. The root cause was lacquer formulation changes and inconsistent distribution of changes to finish maker's tech notes on application/finishing schedule. My understanding of the Martin bridge wing cracks was that the factory continued to use the old finishing schedule despite formulation changes that effectively limited the number of coats which could be applied in a given period. We had plenty of these 'Martin bridge cracks' in for repair, and although they repaired well, we saw cracks elsewhere downstream of repair, suggesting a systemic issue with the finishing process. We eventually began giving a strong recommendation for a full top refinish by Martin as the appropriate resolution, or just live with it.

Thanks Woody!

What would the process of refinishing entail? Especially with a sunburst finish?
I have a Martin 000-28 that’s about 25years old and not a single nitro check visible