Repairing a headstock break
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Difficult to comment without seeing photographs.
If Gorilla offers a Cascamite type adhesive, by all means use that.
If Gorilla offers a Cascamite type adhesive, by all means use that.
1. Gorilla Wood Glue is no better or worse than standard PVA-based "white" wood glue (actually more creamy yellow) [EDIT - not actually sure if white wood glue - "aliphatic resin emulsion" - is "PVA" but that's what I've always referred to it as] sold under the brands Titebond Original, Evostik, Bostik, Everbuild, etc. If there is quite a lot of surface area to glue together and the ridges, shards, splinters, etc, all push together, line up well and mate together tightly, then a joint that's glued and clamped firmly will usually be stronger than the surrounding wood. The tighter the joint and the more firmly it is clamped to squeeze out as much surplus glue as possible, the stronger the join will be. You really don't want voids between the parts that are filled with white wood glue because wood glue itself in a void isn't going to be particularly strong. Where you have much less surface area to glue on a headstock break you often will need the extra support of tight fitting hardwood splines accurately fitted into neatly routed channels across the break. They are very difficult to create using a chisel, so usually a router is the best choice. Different breaks may require different glues and methods, and sometimes a 2-part epoxy may be better than wood glue. A "clean" break can sometimes be the more difficult breaks to get a good strong repair compared with ones where there are finger-like shards that can be pushed together so they interlock.
2. If the break is back around the scarfe joint, then you usually have up to 3 frets that can end up misaligned and in need of work after the break is glued. This might involve levelling all the frets and recrowning them, levelling just a few up at the headstock end, or perhaps even replacing a few frets in the misaligned area. You can usually get a good idea of whether fret heights are going to be affected if you can get a good tight dry fit and sight down the neck.
I had an ibanez (RG something or other) given to me as scrap with the headstock snapped off, this I successfully glued back together with original Titebond. It was a angled break so reasonable gluing surface, it's been fine for a year or two and I'd happily guarantee it wouldn't break there again.
I reckon your one would be well worth doing, I'd recommend Titebond certainly.
I reckon your one would be well worth doing, I'd recommend Titebond certainly.
Thanks guys. I should have it next week at some point so I'll take some photos then.
If it's the scarf joint that's come undone rather than a break in the wood, you probably have no option other than epoxy, as removing the old glue from the surfaces will be almost impossible, and most normal wood glues don't bond well to old glue.
Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
The Mosquito sounded better than the other bombers because it was made of tonewood...OilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
And if you argue ... there's four 303 Browning machine guns and four 20mm Hispano canon to put the case more strongly ... along with a bomb load bigger than than a B17 ...Dave_Mc said:The Mosquito sounded better than the other bombers because it was made of tonewood...OilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
The motto being don't fuck with stuff that's glued together!
You sound like a big de Havilland fan ;) :+1:OilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
Well my Grandad worked for Vickers Supermarine and my father for Westland Aerospace, so aircraft enginearing - well enginearing of all sorts - is sort of in my blood. Innovative materials and thinking outside the box was Geoffrey De Haviland's thing. We actually need a bit more of that in the pickup building business, so many companies happy just to trot out the same old same old ... I mean there is beggar all challenge in making a good PAF it's well trodden parameters. Taking seldom used magnet grades, different form factors and wire types and innovating has always been what interests me.Kittyfrisk said:You sound like a big de Havilland fanOilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
Cascamite has a fascinating ongoing story https://thenamethatsticks.com/ureka-news/the-history-of-cascamite/
The cynic in me always suspects that many old time brands that had a good reputation are likely not what they were, when offered by whatever Corp makes/markets them these days.
I'm thinking for instance of nitromors type paint strippers that have been "elf and safety'd" into something fairly useless.
Hopefully the cascamite glues might be the exception, who knows ?
I only suggested Titebond as it worked well for me on a similar project. I did quite a bit of research beforehand as to specifically gluing a snapped off ibanez h/s and pretty much universal recommendation was the above, mainly by US folks it seems.
The break on mine was totally wood to wood not a previously glued joint that'd parted so there was no other factor in the mix.
Anyway I'd be v. interested to see how this pans out and what you end up using.
I'm thinking for instance of nitromors type paint strippers that have been "elf and safety'd" into something fairly useless.
Hopefully the cascamite glues might be the exception, who knows ?
I only suggested Titebond as it worked well for me on a similar project. I did quite a bit of research beforehand as to specifically gluing a snapped off ibanez h/s and pretty much universal recommendation was the above, mainly by US folks it seems.
The break on mine was totally wood to wood not a previously glued joint that'd parted so there was no other factor in the mix.
Anyway I'd be v. interested to see how this pans out and what you end up using.
I still using Cascamite - and I've used it on and off since I built my first guitar in the 1970s ... and it's as good as it's always been. When gluing up mahogany I always used to use Cascaphen as it's naturally mahogany red on colour.PeteBo said:The cynic in me always suspects that many old time brands that had a good reputation are likely not what they were, when offered by whatever Corp makes/markets them these days.
I'm thinking for instance of nitromors type paint strippers that have been "elf and safety'd" into something fairly useless.
Hopefully the cascamite glues might be the exception, who knows ?
I only suggested Titebond as it worked well for me on a similar project. I did quite a bit of research beforehand as to specifically gluing a snapped off ibanez h/s and pretty much universal recommendation was the above, mainly by US folks it seems.
The break on mine was totally wood to wood not a previously glued joint that'd parted so there was no other factor in the mix.
Anyway I'd be v. interested to see how this pans out and what you end up using.
Good to know, I'll likely get some cascamite to have in stock, I've heard of it but never tried it in real life.OilCityPickups said:I still using Cascamite - and I've used it on and off since I built my first guitar in the 1970s ... and it's as good as it's always been. When gluing up mahogany I always used to use Cascaphen as it's naturally mahogany red on colour.PeteBo said:The cynic in me always suspects that many old time brands that had a good reputation are likely not what they were, when offered by whatever Corp makes/markets them these days.
I'm thinking for instance of nitromors type paint strippers that have been "elf and safety'd" into something fairly useless.
Hopefully the cascamite glues might be the exception, who knows ?
I only suggested Titebond as it worked well for me on a similar project. I did quite a bit of research beforehand as to specifically gluing a snapped off ibanez h/s and pretty much universal recommendation was the above, mainly by US folks it seems.
The break on mine was totally wood to wood not a previously glued joint that'd parted so there was no other factor in the mix.
Anyway I'd be v. interested to see how this pans out and what you end up using.
The last mahogany thing I had to glue up was an old busted SG where the weak body to neck area had gone. In this case I used original Araldite, on recommendation from the bloke in Andy's as was.
I just made a snug fitting block of mahogany and stuck it in the pickup hole, was very solid after that, and who needs a neck pickup anyway :)
The original slow-cure Araldite 2-part epoxy is a lot stronger than the rapid-cure variant.
I see that the current owners of the Cascamite brand have created a Cascamite Accelerator for their Cascamite Powdered Resin Wood Glue that speeds up the cure time from several hours to 25 minutes.
Or the fast bomber version you could threaten them with the plexiglass nose! =)OilCityPickups said:And if you argue ... there's four 303 Browning machine guns and four 20mm Hispano canon to put the case more strongly ... along with a bomb load bigger than than a B17 ...Dave_Mc said:The Mosquito sounded better than the other bombers because it was made of tonewood...OilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
The motto being don't fuck with stuff that's glued together!
But then you had to catch the fast bomber variant ...Dave_Mc said:Or the fast bomber version you could threaten them with the plexiglass nose! =)OilCityPickups said:And if you argue ... there's four 303 Browning machine guns and four 20mm Hispano canon to put the case more strongly ... along with a bomb load bigger than than a B17 ...Dave_Mc said:The Mosquito sounded better than the other bombers because it was made of tonewood...OilCityPickups said:Don't EVER use PVA style glue on guitar necks as it is elastic and will 'creep' under tension over time. I use Cascamite ... and Cascaphen ... the latter was developed from the adhesive they glued Mosquito bombers in world war 2 and Vampire Jet fighters in the late 40s!
The motto being don't fuck with stuff that's glued together!
I am VERY mistrustful over any glue accelerators. You almost always lose some bond strength by 'forcing' a process. That may not matter on auntie Edna's favorite dining chair, but on a bass or guitar neck/headstock I wouldn't chance it ... anyway, are we all so all fire busy that we can't give 24hours for a bond to properly cure? :-)BillDL said:The original slow-cure Araldite 2-part epoxy is a lot stronger than the rapid-cure variant.I see that the current owners of the Cascamite brand have created a Cascamite Accelerator for their Cascamite Powdered Resin Wood Glue that speeds up the cure time from several hours to 25 minutes.
I agree. Except for heat, with slow-set epoxy - it sets quicker, harder and stronger, as well as thinning and penetrating better into materials like wood. I always heat it for jobs like this - the slow setting means you can take your time to get the joint properly clamped up and the excess cleaned, then heat it with a hairdryer, wipe off any further leaks, and leave it under an old incandescent bench light for a few hours so it gets thoroughly heated through. I still leave it 24hrs before disturbing it even then.OilCityPickups said:I am VERY mistrustful over any glue accelerators. You almost always lose some bond strength by 'forcing' a process. That may not matter on auntie Edna's favorite dining chair, but on a bass or guitar neck/headstock I wouldn't chance it ... anyway, are we all so all fire busy that we can't give 24hours for a bond to properly cure? :-)
Hi guys managed to get some photos
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54018056451_3a8bf667b9_w_d.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54018056461_ea87e16850_c_d.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54018056451_3a8bf667b9_w_d.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54018056461_ea87e16850_c_d.jpg
So the crack has followed the scarfe joint line on the treble side but has held at the bass side and has broken across the headstock piece of wood following the grain pattern.
If it's a bad glue job at the factory where insufficient glue was used and it didn't completely cover all the surfaces being jointed there's probably going to be some glue left on both pieces of wood either side of the crack rather than one side just having pulled away leaving the glue residue on one piece of wood only. You won't have enough space to rake out any loose glue residue and it's probably best that all the substrate is left in there to give as much surface to surface contact when re-glued. My worry with just opening it a bit, injecting glue, and clamping it closed again would be that if it does break again you will have even more glue residue left in the crack that would make a second repair harder and probably less successful.
Do you have any syringes and thick blunt needles / nozzles to force glue deeply into the crack and flood it with tons of glue?
I think you will need some for this job. Just search "glue syringe" and filter the results. It should be possible to bend the headstock end forwards just enough to open the gap sufficiently to get some glue right down into the deepest
reaches of the crack without disturbing it too much whereby it comes
tightly back together again. That's a "heart in the mouth" moment as you
start pulling the crack gently open though.Others' opinions may differ, but I believe I would use slow-cure Araldite epoxy for the repair (disposable syringe and needle/nozzle) and I would be inclined to then incorporate a maple spline / splint either side of the truss rod across the split to reinforce the repair after the crack was glued together. Normally that's a job for a router and a jig to accurately cut channels down into the neck and then cut and sand down blocks of maple that will glue very tightly into the channels. A bit like short skunk stripes but of matching wood. That's a job for a good tech or luthier, or a very competent person willing to have a go on their own instrument.
I did have excellent results on a guitar neck with a similar shaped break (although not on a scarfe joint) with an improvised solution that would be a nightmare for a tech or luthier if the neck ever broke again. It was a one-shot job on my own guitar though. I cut fairly shallow and much narrower slots than those for hardwood splines using a Dremel cutting wheel. I found some clips/brackets of hardened steel round rod bent into square "C" shapes with a longer straight upright between the shorter top and bottom horizontals. Imagine two Allen keys placed alongside each other with the short ends at either side both poking down, and scale that shape down to about 35mm long. The long straight section lay in a groove a few mm below the surface of the neck and the short bent ends tapped down firmly into holes I had drilled into the neck either side of the crack. I glued them in with epoxy resin glue so they were like staples bridging the glued crack, and then glued in some maple fillets with superglue that sanded and polished well enough for me not to feel them.
As its through to the fretboard I would seperate the FB from the busted section, and take the headstock section out completely, then you can clean it all and get a proper coating of glue in all the right places.
I've removed fretboards before and comes away easier than you'd think, there's a few tutorials on this I checked out before I attempted it. In this case you'd only need to seperate the end bit.
I've removed fretboards before and comes away easier than you'd think, there's a few tutorials on this I checked out before I attempted it. In this case you'd only need to seperate the end bit.
That's a particularly nasty one. The original scarf joint has been made at too steep an angle, resulting in a smaller than ideal gluing area largely onto endgrain on the neck piece. Looking at this pic, the joint should be almost double that length, starting where it does under the 1st fret, but ending beyond the nut where the neck flares out into the headstock, so it follows the extended line of the back of the head.
It's going to be very difficult to make a strong repair, especially given that most of it is going to be onto old glue - I think I would do as BillDL suggests and splint it either side, as you would with a bad Gibson headstock break. It's a lot of work, but a useful exercise and probably the only way to guarantee it won't just break again.
But there's nothing you can do about that now...https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54018056451_3a8bf667b9_w_d.jpg
It's going to be very difficult to make a strong repair, especially given that most of it is going to be onto old glue - I think I would do as BillDL suggests and splint it either side, as you would with a bad Gibson headstock break. It's a lot of work, but a useful exercise and probably the only way to guarantee it won't just break again.
Thanks chaps it's a bit outside my wheelhouse atm. I don't have a router. It's good to know these things though. Its a bit more work than I initially anticipated.
I dont want to become the next mdphillips (God bless him and his unique approach).
I'll see if I can salvage as much as I can from it machine heads, electronics and the strings.
I dont want to become the next mdphillips (God bless him and his unique approach).
I'll see if I can salvage as much as I can from it machine heads, electronics and the strings.
Or replace the neck - it's the sort of thing you might find quite cheaply on Ebay. All you need to do is make sure it's the same length (number of frets, and length of any overhang under the end of the fingerboard - they will almost all be 34" scale, but check) and if possible, bolt pattern - although that's fixable with less work than repairing this neck. The only real snag would be if the width at the pocket was different enough that the neck didn't fit into the body, but they're *reasonably* standard if they come from one of the big Korean or Indonesian factories.DrJazzTap said:
I'll see if I can salvage as much as I can from it machine heads, electronics and the strings.
Something like this - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/395695806871
Actually, what he said ^
Sticking another neck on it would be simple enough, even if you have to do a bit of shaving (of either part) regarding the neck pocket.
Also I'd imagine it's a simple "bent bit of tin" type bridge, which is easy to move forward or back a bit if the new neck won't quite intonate or whatever
Sticking another neck on it would be simple enough, even if you have to do a bit of shaving (of either part) regarding the neck pocket.
Also I'd imagine it's a simple "bent bit of tin" type bridge, which is easy to move forward or back a bit if the new neck won't quite intonate or whatever
Don’t know if this is any use but I fixed a neck break on my Ibanez RG470 back in 2015. If you click on the pictures (with the photo bucket logo over them) then it shows the original photo.
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/39788/repairing-ibanez-rg470-neck-pictures#latest
I noticed the earlier comments on this thread on using PVA glue. I’m sure that’s true but the repair on the neck on the RG is still rock solid, 9 years later.
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/39788/repairing-ibanez-rg470-neck-pictures#latest
I noticed the earlier comments on this thread on using PVA glue. I’m sure that’s true but the repair on the neck on the RG is still rock solid, 9 years later.
That break was almost identical to mine, though mine had completely come away and the headstock was right off. The angle and pattern of the break was just the same, it must be a weakness in these, especially with the holes for the locking nut there.cruxiform said:Don’t know if this is any use but I fixed a neck break on my Ibanez RG470 back in 2015. If you click on the pictures (with the photo bucket logo over them) then it shows the original photo.
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/39788/repairing-ibanez-rg470-neck-pictures#latest
I noticed the earlier comments on this thread on using PVA glue. I’m sure that’s true but the repair on the neck on the RG is still rock solid, 9 years later.
As I mentioned before, I used after some Internet research, Titebond, which is a pva by the looks of it, and I really don't think it's going anywhere.
There's a large difference between original Titebond and white PVA, while Titebond may well have a PVA base it is leaps and bounds better than the usual PVA glues like Evostick PVA or Gorilla PVA. However on such a short break as ICBM says, in order to be trustworthy it really needs splinting. Unless you have the tools to do this however I'd hunt down a new neck.PeteBo said:That break was almost identical to mine, though mine had completely come away and the headstock was right off. The angle and pattern of the break was just the same, it must be a weakness in these, especially with the holes for the locking nut there.cruxiform said:Don’t know if this is any use but I fixed a neck break on my Ibanez RG470 back in 2015. If you click on the pictures (with the photo bucket logo over them) then it shows the original photo.
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/39788/repairing-ibanez-rg470-neck-pictures#latest
I noticed the earlier comments on this thread on using PVA glue. I’m sure that’s true but the repair on the neck on the RG is still rock solid, 9 years later.
As I mentioned before, I used after some Internet research, Titebond, which is a pva by the looks of it, and I really don't think it's going anywhere.
Titebond Original is aliphatic resin, not PVA. Titebond II is PVA.
There we go ... I thought i wasn't going mad .ICBM said:Titebond Original is aliphatic resin, not PVA. Titebond II is PVA.
I picked up some more guitars to work on for charity at the weekend. I was offered an ibanez bass, which had a headstock break. It was a two piece maple neck and it looks like around the scarf joint. I left that for another time as I had enough to work on.
It looked like a relatively clean break. My question is, is it just a case of lining the truss rod back up in the slot applying some gorilla wood glue and clamping it for a few days?