Repair for side veneer?

[Craig C.]

So, I've received this guitar which had previously been "repaired" and am having to undo and redo a lot of the work on it (including a neck reset - see the neck reset gallery). After the neck reset, my main concern is this:

The guitar had also been bashed or dropped on one side at some point, and while getting rid of the lacquer cracks is not a top priority (the top has plenty of checking as well - it's part of the guitars character at this point) - I would like to be able to do something about the missing piece of side veneer up near the binding. Any thoughts? 

Also, looks like they tried to stop the crack with CA there, and didn't get it flush, so it looks like I will have to thin the CA out and then redo that as well. I know I can minimise the visibility of the lacquer cracks by melting them down with a bit of thinner and nitrocellulose lacquer and then polishing it up, but the CA filled crack troubles me a bit. 

Any thoughts are much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Paul Verticchio]

Hi Craig.

Commenting for a few reasons.

1. To give your post a bump back to the top of the forum;

2. To ask you what make & model guitar it is;

3. To ask you to briefly describe your experience & skill level.  The reason I ask this is to allow responders to tailor responses to your skill level.   ....and finally;

4. Is this a guitar you got for personal use or a customer's instrument?

With that information, you may get some responses.

Best of luck :)

[Craig C.]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply. The guitar is a 1964 Kawai EP-150. It's a nice guitar, and fairly well built, but not particularly valuable. An instrument I picked up to restore. I am currently also doing a neck reset on it. 

I've been a long time tinkerer with guitars, and took a 6-week intensive luthier course last year to further my knowledge. I'm a novice luthier. I've fixed well upwards of a hundred or so guitars at this point, but mostly solid body electrics, and a lot of it is simple stuff like neck adjustments, refrets, or electronic work. I am building up my experience by buying up old junk guitars, repairing them, and then once I make them solid and playable, moving them on. This is one of those. So, not for a customer. I don't work in a shop or anything, and though I do pickup rewinds for a local place, this is just something I am doing with the hope of eventually getting good enough to open my own repair shop one day. (I live in Japan, where I've taught English for a number of years, and I'd like to eventually get away from teaching English as it has no real future, and this is sort of my plan. I wish I could do an apprenticeship somewhere, but a little late in the game for me -  have a wife and child and am fairly settled here)

The finish on the guitar is nitro lacquer - so I was going to melt down the cracks a bit, but I'm wondering what the best way to clean that CA up is, and then fill in that missing piece of veneer (at the top of the CA glue up, just below the binding). I was thinking of just finding a block of wood of a closely matching colour, and using sawdust and superglue like I would on a fretboard chip out. It might not look the greatest, but it would fill it up and allow me to then fix the binding.

I was just wondering if anyone here might have a different/better approach.

Thanks for your consideration.

[Ned Knepp]

 If it were mine, I'd probably make a mahogany "chip" for the missing bit. Glue and dust might help hide it but doing the whole patch that way won't give you any grain so it will probably look like a patch of putty. 

CA isn't all that hard to clean up if you take your time. A razor blade use as a scraper will level and clean up the excess glue. It's possible that it will almost disappear. You may need to use some ultra fine (micro mesh) sand paper bring it to a nice finish.

One thing that concerns me is the condition of the ply (sides) in the impact area. Did you check things on the inside, particularly along the top edge of the damaged area?

[Andrew]

Second vote a thin piece of mahogany for the missing piece. Find a scrap that matches well enough and cut a thin slice off with a fine saw (or a few slices, just in case), and sand/plane/scrape/whatever down to the necessary thickness. Or maybe you can find a suitable piece of veneer. If you can scarf joint the edges of the new piece with the existing veneer and glue it in with hot hide glue you have a better chance of getting a favourable glue line on the patch. Even if you just scarf the ends it should look pretty good - getting three scarfed edges to line up on a curved surface would be a trick, and the long grain doesn't need it as much as the ends, especially if you can find a good match and line up the grain nicely.

[Craig C.]

Thanks for the advice everyone. 

Got most of the cracks cleaned up, filled in the missing piece of binding, and got a piece of wood is a fairly close match and am working it down to size now. Hope to get it fairly close.

Thanks agian.