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Well folks, I dropped my beloved Delilah.

For the newbies, Delilah was my second build. She's a 00-12 fret, made of WV cherry. I recently replaced her top with WV red spruce from the Pocahontas National Forest. I also reset her neck to the proper angle.

I named her Delilah, because I had a hard time building her. Her shape isn't symmetrical. because I didn't have a proper mold for her. You name it, and it happened. I swear that Delilah didn't want to be a guitar. But for all of her faults, she has a fantastic voice. I've had 3 offers now to sell her, warts and all. But, she'll never be for sale.

I dropped her and she landed squarely on the corner of her upper back, right shoulder. The wood splintered, plus there are 2 other cracks, all are through and through damage.

I pushed the wood back together the best I could. My concern was to stabilize the damage immediately. When I build, I squirrel away every scrap of wood, because you never know when you'll need it. I have off cuts of her wood. I glued a ~ 2x2" piece of thin cherry to the damage inside, and I used a piece of plexiglas on the outside, sandwiching the damage. Everything was held in place by strong magnets. This brought the splintered wood back together pretty well. I also put cleats on the cracks and I ran ca glue along them.

Then I flooded the damaged area with thin CA glue. After everything set up, I took a closer look. She had a 1/2" long area of missing wood that I couldn't find. Using an off cut, I matched her wood the best that I could, and I cut a filet to fill the area. The missing spot was in the shape of a triangle. I made the filet a rough pointed elliptical shape, which would be a better match to her crazy grain.

I put the filet in, with CA glue, after cutting out and cleaning the graft area. Truthfully, I could have done a better job. If this guitar was someone else's. I would have done the filet nicer, but this is Delilah and i don't mind if she had one more scar. I just want to make sure that she's stable.

I sanded the area to level everything. I decided to strip the shellac off of her entire back, because the cherry had darkened since I built her. To make her back match the shade, I had to sand her entire back to remove the patina.

I'm in the process of french polishing her back again.

An awful way to get the opportunity to refine your restoration skills, but I can see you are getting to the mastery stage...

Sorry to hear that, but I like your attitude. As you said, I can't really see the repair. Good work!

I can completely commiserate - to a degree. The sound of the "el kabong" and the sickening crack that my favorite guitar made when my son "Bam Bam" threw it against an oak stair post still replays in my mind. It felt completely wrong to shove my paws up inside and push things back into place but EIR is blessedly forgiving. Being that it's a factory built guitar (Larrivee) I haven't attempted to fix the polyester finish and have just chalked it up to adding to the guitar's character. Oddly, the guitar has never sounded better! Perhaps "Bam Bam" gave it some mojo!

way too go if you learned something it was worth it
nice job on the fix

Nice looking repair - great to have the original piece of wood to use.

Ed

ruby@magpage.com wrote:Nice looking repair - great to have the original piece of wood to use.

Ed

It's definitely helpful to have a piece of the original wood. I'm a wood hoarder. I keep EVERYTHING.

I think you're right, nobody is going to know it's a repair. It might be seen, but it looks like a knothole in the wood itself, so I think the vast majority of people are just going to assume that's what it is.

Excellent work!