Guitar case repair
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:40 pm
About a year ago I posted a thread here about damage done to a Guardian guitar case when travelling by air. Air Canada quickly reimbursed me for the new cost of the case, but it was not that badly damaged (although it would have cost a lot to repair probably.) Having bought a replacement case, I decide to repair the damaged one for daily use. Photos follow. The impact cracked the side of the case, and split the bottom. I cut away most of the split bottom and squeezed glue into the remaining crack and clamped it. I used a piece of "mahogany" 1/4" plywood to fashion a replacement piece, butt joined it with glue, and glued in two cleats (made from an ice cream bar stick), cut with a 5/8" plug cutter, and glued into a shallow 5/8" recess cut with a forstner bit. The bottom splice was glued and brad nailed to the side. I looked long and hard for scraps of Tolex fabric to finish it but found none, so bought a one yard piece of 54" material; I now have enough for life. This i glued on using E6000 adhesive which I had on hand. I think the original adhesive might have been water-based contact cement, and I considered using that, but wanted more flexibility when pushing the back piece of Tolex in behind the original piece still on the side. I glued some and taped it to cure, then glued some more and taped it etc. It worked okay but you can see in the photo I need to clean that seam up. In the end I was pretty happy, and it is going to get beat up along the way some more, but it felt good to patch it up. I found very useful information here also: http://www.stevekirtley.org/caserepair.htm (Two more photos in a reply following this post.)
As an aside to this, I was interested to see the construction, which is advertised in this line of Guardian cases as 7-ply construction. The back clearly was only three-ply 1/4" material, and the sides were 1/2" or a little less, with 4 plies, in some places 5. So I wonder what the "5-ply" cases look like inside. But the case did protect the guitar from the impact.
As an aside to this, I was interested to see the construction, which is advertised in this line of Guardian cases as 7-ply construction. The back clearly was only three-ply 1/4" material, and the sides were 1/2" or a little less, with 4 plies, in some places 5. So I wonder what the "5-ply" cases look like inside. But the case did protect the guitar from the impact.