Small nick repair

[Alan Cangemi]

I have a small nick (about 1/8" long, 1/16"wide) through the finish on my otherwise pristine tope of my acoustic guitar. It goes through to the wood. What is the best way to fill this type of ding? The guitar is a 1993 guild d50.

Thanks for the input.

[Grahame Myers]

The first question must be: Do you know what it's finished with? nitro?, shellac (unlikely), poly? depending on what it's been finished with (I'd guess from the fact that it's a Guild and from '93 that it's it's Nitro, but you can never be 100% sure. If it's nitro, you should be able to run some nitro clear nitro laquer into the crack, and it'll melt in with the old nitro. If it's not nitro, you can dropfill with medium CA, and scrape it flush after it's properly dry.
You can do a nitro check in that you try the finish out with aceton and a tiny drop on a toothpick. If it's nitro it'll melt, you can polish it out again. If it's poly, the aceton will have no effect.
Those are my first thoughts, but there are guys here that've had more Guilds in their hands than me (here in Germany they're few and far between). Look here for more info that could help: http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Technique/Finish/AcetoneFin...

Best

Grahame

[Greg Mirken]

If your reason for repairing this is to make the top pristine once again, you need to have a professional do the repair. At best, the repair will be unobtrusive; an inexperienced home repair is likely to look worse than the ding.

Otherwise, my vote would be to leave it alone. Any instrument that's played accumulates marks.

[Alan Cangemi]

Thanks Grahame and Gregg....you both make good points. Here's what I've done.....I took a small amount of table wax, filled the hole, let it dry and shrink, and then buffed it smooth....the wax took on the color of the surrounding area and the nick disappeared!!! Now I can sleep at night.

I remembered I repaired a similar (actually much longer) type of scratch in some woodwork once in my house, and that repair still is unnoticeable 15 years later.

Let's see how this holds up.

Alan

[Jeff Highland]

Unfortuntely, by using wax on a scratch down to bare wood, you have contaminated the wood there making proper repair with lacquer much more difficult

[Mike Kolb]

I'm with Grahame on this one. Any instrument worth it's salt is going to accumulate nicks and scratches over it's career. There are a few customers of mine who fuss & fret over every accumulated blemish. If it's bare wood, we seal it, but I try to tell them to cherish those "beauty marks" as little badges of honor.

Jeff's right: the damage is now done by filling the scratch to the bare wood with wax.... but, in the grand scheme of things, the wood is at least sealed and hopefully a lesson's learned.

OK, so it's got some boo-boo's (and it'll undoubtedly get more). Play the heck out of it and enjoy the music.

[Alan Cangemi]

Jeff and Mike,

Thanks for the lesson and the heads up.....I've tried to accept the "beauty mark" as a badge of honor....but since I caused the ding by dropping a harmonica onto the guitar...well, I see no honor in that. And now I've contanminated the wood with the wax!!!! I suppose there's nothing left to do but to take a length of used string, go into the bathroom, lock the door, and do the honorable thing.

Gads.

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

The honor is to play both guitar and harmonica!

[Ned Knepp]

There's nothing sadder than a guitar hung in the prime if it's life.