| Classical guitar headstock repair |
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| Written by Matthew Tucker | |||
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OK so its not a bass, but the repair was challenging one. Doris gave me this busted-up classical guitar. Just look at what sorry state it was in:
 I really like the rosette. This guitar has been much played, the belly is still flat and everything apart from headstock looks sound. First I glued the split headstock back together between perspex to keep things flat.
 Then I tried to get a good fit back onto the neck - easier said than done. the headstock seems to have been twisted away from the break, so i had to get in there with tweezers and a magnifying glass to remove the crap and straighten the fibres. getting a snug fit hasn"t been easy. There IS a veneer on the headstock, and this made the clamping even trickier. 
I thought maybe i"d use epoxy to glue it back together and fill the gaps, then though better of this, and went ahead with hide glue as usual.  Having just scored a lovely scientific hotplate (with electric stirrer!) for $5, I was able to heat the whole assembly by placing the hotplate underneath the work for a while, and heated my glue at the same time.  Clamp up was tricky, and despite the heat - or more likely because of it - the glue set quite quickly. Clamps off the next day, the whole thing looks wonky - but i suspect the headstock actually wasn"t straight in the first place, because everything i did lined up, more or less. As you can see, the thing looks a bloody horrible mess with chips (mostly veneer, mind) missing. And I haven"t bothered to clean up to glue at all. But actually, it looks worse than it is. I decided to remove the veneer altogether to add a new one using stronger wood. Rigged up a jig for thinning the headstock and screwed a perspex plate onto my new laminate trimmer. Used a 10mm follower bit for this job. 
 I put a nice thick veneer on the front of the headstock. I"m not sure what wood it is; perhaps Qld maple. 
 This is the ugly back of the headstock. I routed this off to install a thin veneer on the back. 
 You can see the remnants of the join, and the two veneers, in this pic:  I finished simply with french polish tinted with red prooftint.  The insides of the slots are a bit rough, but its not worth spending too much time on them.  It's a long way from this! So now, I have a new guitar, and tomorrow I get some strings to try it out!
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