Titebond long-shot and it worked.

[Mark Wybierala]

A client brought me in an Epiphone Les Paul Custom with a fractured neck. This was a set neck with a silver glitter polyurethane finish. It was a unique fracture from the guitar falling to the floor. The crack began on both sides of the nut and ran lengthwise for about ten inches at an angle of about -10 degrees into the middle mass of the neck. Normally damage like this would have just knocked off the headstock. The D-string Grover tuner was busted so I suppose the guitar landed headstock first. The guitar was not worth a replacement neck but it was a good guitar. I had doubts about whether I could execute a decent repair at a cost that suited the guitar. I quoted a price for a successful repair and a cost for a bench fee is it wasn't successful which is something I haven't done before.

To begin I just clamped the fracture tight to see if the gap would fully close and it did. For perspective, I would estimate that there was between 15 and 20 square inches of separated wood in the fracture and it was very clear that the trussrod passed through the fracture. I loosened the trussrod (dual adjustable) to neutral. All I did was install a pair of E-strings to open the fracture a bit more and pour Titebond into the open gap. I closed the gap using a clamp and opened it up again twice. I then closed the gap to about 1/8", applied masking tape to the opening on both sides leaving the opening under the nut clear and the last one inch on both sides of the neck. I used compressed air to push the Titebond deeper which seemed to be effective with glue oozing from the last one inch opening. I clamped it up using bicycle innertube and let it dry for three days.

The resulting joint was quite clean. None of the finish had been lost along the fracture lines although there was a lot of spider webbing in the thick finish. After cleaning up the Titebond squeeze out using a wet green scrubby pad and warm water, I applied water thin CA to the fracture line and some of the spider web finish cracks. This was by hand using a whip tip and really good lighting. On over half of the finish fracture, the CA penetrated and wicked in very well almost disappearing the fracture lines. I applied the CA three times and used accelerator after a 60 second wait.

I used 600 grit wet on a rigid flat hard 1" X 2" sanding block in gentle circular motion to cut back the CA on the finish surface until there was no longer a perception of feeling the fracture or evidence of fracture in reflected surface light. You can still tell the neck was damaged from lines in the clear silver glitter finish but cosmetics was never considered to be a goal in this economical repair.

With what I hoped was a good neck structure, I checked the fret level and trussrod action using my straightedge. The trussrod seemed to operate just fine and the neck was generally going into relief and backbow equally on both sides of the neck. The check revealed some unlevel fretwork so I addressed this with a semi technical fret leveling procedure which is just a single pass up the neck with a fret rocker with the trussrod optimized to just a hint of rock using a straightedge. The amount of fret leveling was no more than I'd typically see on any production guitar. I recrowned and polished the frets.

I strung up the guitar with 11-58 GHS Boomers. The bridge and saddles had not been disturbed since the damage occurred and the guitar set up beautifully. My main worry had been that the trussrod would not longer work properly but it worked just fine. I think the approach was a bit barbaric just pouring in Titebond but it worked out just fine. The total time for this repair was 2.25 hours and the client is very happy with the result and cost.

[Jason Rodgers]

Wow, Mark, great success story! So this neck had some funky run-out, huh? A friend gave me an acoustic with a break like that: broken diagonally from above the nut on the headstock face to about the back of the 3rd or 4th fret. He said the neck had started to twist after having it in storage for a few years... he tried to twist it back... the break didn't go back together well. Anyways, it was a bolt-on neck, so I salvaged the EIR fretboard and tuners, tossed the broken neck, and will attempt to build a new neck for the donor body some day.