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This guitar had the neck removed poorly, breaking both sides of the heel block (if that's the right term). I glued that back together, changed the wood screws which were stripped to machine screws with embedded nuts in the neck and made a shim that seems to have the neck aligned with the top of the bridge well enough that I'm thinking of hide glueing it. There's a gap on both sides of the neck, one measures at .008", and one is a little more than .010". Not at all clear what I should do with respect to those side gaps. The larger one is visible from the top. Appreciate any advice.

Any way to do a picture?


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Mebbe. I have pix on my phone, but obviously I'm new on this site and don't yet know how to post a pic here. Will dig around some and see if I can figure it out. What exactly do you want to see?

A little history: I'm 70, no interest in doing this for money, spent the last 30 years or so rebuilding motorcycles. If you do a good job you end up with a $3-4K valued bike that it took 7-8K to build. Did seven or eight, think I wanna take a break from that. When I was in the service, a buddy got me into guitar, and he flew to Japan to buy an Aria. At the time I thought it sounded sweet. Thought it would be a challenge to buy a project guitar and see what I could do with it. I have a few that I play, so if I can fix this one so it plays well, I'll probably just give it to a family member. roy

We need to see pictures. Email your cell phone picture to yourself. I believe it has to be less than 256K, if its bigger you can open it with a program like MS Paint (the original version) and resize it.

Come back here and open the full editor to post a reply. Below the text box is something that says "if you want to attach one or more files...", choose your file, add the file, submit it. Its a big huge hassle but thats what you have to do. A picture is worth a thousand words.....

I'll add that project guitars can be just like project motorcycles (or cars or house or....) - often they are loosing propositions but thats the way we learn (and some of use get gratification from bring back an old instrument to playing condition. We'll help you all we can.

Here's the worst side. My plan was to use this to learn a proper setup, but I would like to not totally ignore cosmetics along the way, especially not do things that make it too late to fix something obvious. I doubt I will have anything better than a 5 foot guitar, but I'm expecting to learn a lot of what not to do. What other pix? roy

Here's an as received view:

The missing spruce patch...

You could inlay a couple strips of marquetry, letting them overhang a bit covering the gap.

Didn't even know what marquetry was. I'll buy a sample pack and see if I can get it thinned down enough without tearing it up. So, when I get it ready for assy, do I use hide glue or CA?

You could use a black white black stip just like the puddling on the git. I’d just use titebond myself.

That’s purfling. Auto-complete miss.

What's puddling? Using titebond, you'd not really expect to fill the whole cavity would you? You're just talking about filling the gap at the top of the soundboard, right?

Sorta related, the fretboard angle I show in the first pic is how I'm getting the straightedge to the bridge height that should give me decent action...but it looks wierd to me. I think there's more bulging aft of the bridge than I realized at first. Am I overlooking a better way to deal with the fretboard mount, or is this what you do when you're dealing with an old guitar?

What I see are two different problems. First is to reconstruct the damaged sound hole area - glue that piece back in and glue up that crack between the top and the head block. Either Titebond or hide would work - if you are comfortable with hide that probably the better choice but since Titebond has a much longer working time that would be my choice. I would do it in two parts - work glue into the top to block crack, clamp it up and let dry. It looks like the sound hole piece will fit back where it belongs - you might have to make a little cleat on the inside to span any cracks.

Second, the bolt on neck looks very much like a standard Fender style. If so it shouldn't have any glue in the pocket - the screws are sufficient. The neck can stand proud of the top (they do on Fenders) and the neck might be angled slightly (sometimes this is done with shims in a Fender neck pocket) - your goal is to have the neck angle and height such that a straightedge on the frets just touches the top of the bridge. That will give you enough adjustment to get a nice playable action.

The 0.018 gap in your first picture means that there is a good change of some wiggle when you screw the neck on - be careful to get it centered with the bridge. I like to put a straightedge on each sides of the neck and make sure they hit the same place on the bridge.

The neck joint on that guitar is common on electrics but pretty rare on an acoustic. However it is probably much easier to work on than the standard dovetail or M&T joints, it sounds like you understand the geometry just fine.

OK, thanks. I've already done the hide glueing of the heel block sides and the spruce patch of the soundhole; I was just a bit worried about counting only on the machine screws to hold the neck and thought some hide glue there too would be best for a repair that might last awhile. Then I started worrying about the gaps along the side of the neck. The fretboard straightedge is just over the top of the bridge. There's a metal saddle holder that's about 2mm tall, the straightedge touches it about halfway up, so mebbe 1 mm above the wood of the bridge. I think I can get pretty good action with it as is; that side angle of the fretboard just looked weird to me, based on any other guitar I have. (I only have acoustics and classicals, no electrics.)

roy

I've never been a fan of wood screws holding the neck on like that but that is the way Fender has done it forever. A really elegant solution (you'll appreciate this) is to put threaded inserts in the neck and use machine bolts - lots of us do this on standard M&T heel guitars and I've seen it done on a few Fenders but its a huge amount of work with little justification. An electric guitar has maybe 120 pounds of tension on the neck, a steel string acoustic has 160 or 170 so it is quite a bit more, but I wouldn't worry about it for this guitar.

Here is a picture of a Fender style neck joint with a couple of little 1/4 and 1/2 degree shims that can change the neck angle just enough to get good action. However you also see a lot of old tele's with a piece of match book cover or a Dunlop pick in that cavity - guitar work isn't always elegant

I should probably say something about how I completed this little issue.... I was not able to modify a saddle that gave me the expected results at the 13th fret with a capo on the 1st. So I decided to pull the neck back off with the goal of starting with the fingerboard more parallel with the top of the guitar. After a few different shim arrangements, I ended up with a flat spacer of 2.8mm and my narrowest angled shim together. Gave me a straightedge 1mm above the metal saddle holder. I then made a new nut with wider spacing than the original to fit my fat fingers. Now it is playing as good as any guitar I own. I'm enjoying it and will continue to do that until I decide to put some work into the cosmetics, which are currently 5 feet at best. Thanks for all inputs, they were helpful. roy

So, here I am a year and a half later, working on the lacquer finish of two retops, and it occurs to me that this old Aria, that I've tried to repair with glue cleaning and regluing and that has never held under the string tension; might actually could be fixed if I removed the top and routed off the broken part of the neck block (is that the right term?) build and mount a new neck block, or portion of same, and then either try to reattach this top, or make a new one to fit. Guitar obviously not worth that much work, but if I could do that and make it playable again, I'd feel pretty confident about moving onto a kit guitar build. I have routed off plastic binding a couple times now, made a mess, but seemed like a reasonable way to remove the top. Any advice out there as to whether this is a reasonable approach? Since the busted parts are so close to the top, doesn't seem to me like taking off the back would be that helpful. Just thinking for now. Appreciate any inputs. Roy

A kit build will be easier than the repairs you propose.... And pulling and reinstalling a back is much easier than doing the top even with the neck off. Here is how I do some of these repairs. https://howardguitars.blogspot.com/2015 ... pairs.html

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Brian, I totally appreciate your input. It's the same thing my brother told me two years ago. And now I am working with John Hall on ordering my first kit, a mahogany OM I'm pretty excited about.

I remember reading your link some time ago, but honestly, that level of delicacy in removing and replacing the binding seems way beyond my hamfisted tendencies. I have quite a few questions in my head about how to do what you've done. Like for instance, do I first score the inside of the binding with an exacto to keep from tearing the poly (I suspect) finish when I heat the binding off? Doubt that I could do it free hand. Make a blade spacer/holder? I think for now I'll make a mold to hold the sides in place and ponder (meaning google) a bit more before I decide. Certainly if I could do what you are showing on the Guild, there's a whole new level of skills I've not tried before. Thanks for the advice.
Roy

OK, have actually made some progress on this old Aria. I had a bit of a learning curve in taking off the binding, didn't realize how little heat it would take once you got it started. I believe I could do this now the next time I need to try. This time I melted almost half the binding before I figured out what I was doing, so it's not going back on.


Also, I tried to scribe the edge of the binding and didn't go deep enough, so there's a few paces where I've pulled the finish off the sides. Hoping I can salvage and reattach those. Nope, I tried, they're way too fragile.


But, the good news is that the neck block has been repaired and reinstalled, and the neck fits fine, measuring the height at the bridge.
This poor guitar never had much of a chance; there was an obvious little limb or knothole growing thru the top portion of the neck block which came apart under the string tension. Removing the back made it so much easier to replace the broken piece; I would have never thought of trying to do that based on my own confidence/experience, but now it seems obvious.


There were quite a few plywood strips of the rosewood that had to be salvaged and reglued to the back from how it came apart, and there's a pretty nasty gap in the rosette just under the fingerboard, so it'll be awhile before I'm ready for new binding, but I'm pretty darn sure I can make this guitar play comfortably again. While I had it apart, since it's a 000 body shape, I also scalloped the top braces per the 000 dimension plans. They were pretty rough. I'm looking forward to actually starting a kit build now. Thanks for the advice and encouragement. Roy

Continuing in what mistakes to learn from...The form I had made was miserable, when I started aligning the back for the reinstall, the sides had moved enough that the back was out of alignment. The form material was too soft to keep it perfectly aligned, although I did use wood wedge shims and got it almost perfect, one side of the lower bout still left a bit of the back overhanging which I ended up sanding back flush. Since I couldn't use any clamps with the form, I made a go bar deck. It worked pretty well, but I probably needed a few more bars. There were a couple of spots I had to use weights to get the back flush with the sides.

After it was all dry, I decided to give the original plastic binding a try, even though I had burnt the end and mis-shaped at least a quarter of it with my heat gun. I suspect an actual hair dryer would have been a better choice. But, surprise, it softened enough that I got it reinstalled, which looked better than any of the other replacements I was thinking of using (none of which were 8 mm tall).

Well, except for the burnt end which I had to cut off and patch in a piece that I'd glued up from some shorter pieces I had around. It's pretty ugly, but I thought I'd try to get it playable again before I worried about trying to fix the worst cosmetics such as:

So I strung it up, thinking I'd let it set a bit before checking relief,action, etc. The neck straightedge came right to the top of the bridge, so I was pretty pleased with that as an improvement. Overnight the neck inserts must have started pulling out, so I'm setting this aside for a while. I want to finish a couple others that are at the lacquer stage before I go back to this one. I believe this was the first neck I installed nut inserts, suspect I'll either try some epoxy to hold them or have to plug the holes and start over. Not sure there's much benefit in sharing a beginner's trials and tribulations, so I'm thinking that's all from here. Roy

When learning the craft, there is no harm in trying to rebuild a turd. After awhile, you figure out what works and what won't, and WHY. These days, I take them apart for use as raw materials for patching, etc.

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

That's a very cool jog you put together there.

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Removing binding is a PIA.

I have an old Gibson archtop in for a restoration and I am thinking of using this clever method: https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Online_R ... _L-5_.html

Otherwise I'm lucky and have skinny arms and can get away with doing a lot of work through the sound hole.

Ok, I guess this is a 9 month update. First time I re-attached the back and tried to string it up, I did not have good enough attachment to the back side of the neckblock, so it came loose and was unplayable. After some time, I decided to try again, took the back off again, made a shim for the neck block, reattached the back, but my lousy mold did not hold the sides perfectly in place, so I had to patch some mahogony into a spot that was too wide for my original binding, and then I just decided to try binding the back with some mahogony I had cut and bent as a learning experience. Many weeks later, the dang thing is quite playable, and actually sounds pretty good. But the original hacked up back removal sans any scoring along the binding/body line left divots and finish gaps below the 'new' binding. So I'm trying to deal with them using glueboost, CA, and now wipe-on poly. (The original finish was impervious to acetone.) I'm not sure I'll put a lot more work into this, but I thought I'd show a pic of what I'm trying to blend and see if anyone has good advice. At best this will be a donation to some school music teacher, but if there's more to learn about blending the finish, I'm willing to try.


Thanks for all the advice, it's actually a good feeling to have it playable, even if it isn't ever gonna be beautiful. Roy

One can do amazing things with Gluboost but that repair will be challenging. I'd encourage you to give it a go. If that doesn't work you can always go back and refinish the sides. ;-)

Thanks for the update. Keep us informed....

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