Seeking advice D'angelico Tammany XT Vintage Natural Finish Repair

[Underwood]

Hi,

I'm seeking advice on finishing a finish seam created after repairing a split top on a D' Angelico Tammany XT. The guitar has a Vintage Natural finish. I acquired it with a crack in the top which I repaired with Tite-bond Hide Glue. I applied the glue using the [Stew Mac] suction-cup pumping method. Afterwards, I scraped the glue line using the [Stew Mac] razorblade cellophane tape trick.

After scraping the glue down and smoothing the seam, I am left with a shadow/smooth finish on the seam/glue line. You can see the shadow line when the light hits the guitar top at different angles. The shadow line/streak shows as a smooth finish running through the satin finish where I scraped with a razor blade. I am considering thinning out some Minwax satin polyurethane with mineral spirits (1:1) and apply with a wipe on technique. I picked up this technique from the Wood Whisperer YouTube channel. I have used it for finishing/refinishing full pieces but have not attempted a limited polyurethane repair/patch.

If anyone has any experience with what I am attempting to do, please share any advice would be most welcome.

I have attached a PDF which I attempt to show the crack before gluing, the top after gluing, and the scrape/seam shadow line.

And yes, I did clamp the glue-up to my dining room table when my wife was not around.

Thanks in advance.

Matt

[phavriluk]

Whatever you do, mask off the smallest possible area to do what you're discussing. And if there's finish on the repair, is there cause to continue?

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I'm looking at your pictures of the "crack" and I think what you had there was a crack in the lacquer not in the top itself. I can see that this crack did not appear to follow the grain structure. I make this conjecture because I have g
had a couple of guitars that I built with cracks like that and if was the lacquer that was fractured.

If it is a finish crack and it's lacquer, and you used titebond in the crack then you have a dissimilar material thing going on and I can imagine the crack might oozed filled but be discolored.

If I'm wrong please take no offense. Just from my experience it looks like this to me.

Nice looking guitar.

[TEETERFAN]

Yea, Kevin’s right, looks like some of the cracking in the lacquer. So you could potentially fill with lacquer. Dirt (and now Tightbound) has made it visible. Removing that without disturbing the wood grain is now the challenge. Scraping just the line would be tricky. Once clean, you could brush in clear lacquer with real tiny brush.It will shrink in As it drys, so it may take a few coats. Let dry at least 2 weeks before leveling it, follow with 1500/2000/3000 sanding and polish. Could come out nice or it could keep getting more noticeable, the more you fuss with it. Additional efforts could lead to a complete refinish, which would devalue the instrument.
That said, it may be better to leave it along or lightly polish what you have. It actually seems to blend in with the additional cracks visible on the instrument. It is perhaps “character”.

[Underwood]

I do think there is only a finish crack at the bridge, but there was a fair amount of vertical displacement below the bridge which to me indicates that the top split. I took pictures of the inside and did not see a split, but I may have waited too long after I received the guitar and the top swelled. I wouldn't know a proper lacquer split if it hit me in the head, so maybe the displacement I felt was just a finish crack.

The guitar shop eBay seller shipped the guitar to me in the original Sweetwater box/packaging, with the original literature/neck wrench in March 2025. I'm thinking it is a new guitar which was returned because of the top finish/split/crack. Likely the top cracked/split due to being in a dry environment. I live on a peninsula with rivers 1,000 ft to the east/west and the Atlantic 3,000 ft to the south so whatever split there was closed up pretty quick. I placed a hygrometer on the guitar as it hung in my bedroom and never saw the humidity less than 45%.

From the sounds of it, I will probably not do much other than give the seam a quick wipe (maybe more of a swipe) with lacquer thinner (only to the area I scraped) to mend the finish.

I think the guitar looks OK, I am fine with not doing anything more, but I figured I would ask you all what you thought.

The guitar is heading to a remote lake in Canada in a few days (no cell/no electricity/no plumbing) for a month or two. I'll keep you all updated when it returns.

Much Thanks for your advice

[Underwood]

Deleted duplicate message.

[Underwood]

Deleted duplicate message.

[Stray Feathers]

There is a helpful video on the Stew Mac site by Mamie Minch, a respected luthier whose late father was active on this forum. She talks about using lacquer retarder for doing finish repairs. I've found it quite useful and forgiving. Bruce W.

https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas ... ar-finish/