Fixing musical instruments

This picture teaches a lesson: the purpose of a hard case is to protect an instrument; the purpose of a "gig bag" is to keep all the broken pieces in one place.

I'd dampened the splintered wood and, from inside, pressed it back into place as best I could. Then I made a little patch from mahogany veneer, bigger than the break, and soaked it so that it would bend readily. This was glued in place -- on the inside -- using hide glue (so I could undo it if it didn't work) and held it in place with a five-pound bag of BBs, themselves held in place by powerful rare-earth magnets on the outside of the instrument. I let it sit for a week. Then I sanded it flush.

Larrivee, like many guitar makers, uses a two-part, unstrippable finish. It was difficult to arrive at just the right shade of stain, so I made it very weak and applied many coats, letting it dry fully in between. When the color was right, I applied several light coats of semi-gloss lacquer, with steel wool in between, to blend the finish with the awful original stuff.

At left is the original banjolin neck, just for comparison purposes. Next to it is the replacement neck, from a long-neck tenor banjo that had probably gotten converted to five-string. At top is the new calfskin head; below that is the Whyte Laydie pot and next to it the tension hoop. Below them is the dowel stick (it's important that the serial number on it match the serial number of the pot), and, in the bag, hooks, nuts, and other hardware.

. . . so the original hole for the dowel stick had to be plugged, then redrilled elsewhere. Here's the plug in place and the location for the new hole marked.

This instrument put up a fight. The screw that fits in the end of the dowel stick, holding that end to the pot, had broken. So I had to drill down to it, then saw across it so as to make a slot in the end of the broken piece. This let me use a thin screwdriver to unscrew it. Then I could plug the whole hole with a piece of dowel, and fill in the slot with fine sawdust and glue.

Getting the angles just right is critical. The new hole having been drilled in the replacement neck and dry-fitted, it was time to glue the dowel stick to the neck. This is the makeshift jig I used. Then I let it stay put for 24 hours, and removed the neck and dowel stick from the pot.

The reason to glue up the dowel stick first is now obvious -- the dowel stick makes a good handle.

This neck was wonderfully figured under that old brown stain. The masking tape is to keep the lacquer I was applying from getting onto the fretboard.