Do You Have To Use A Mahogany Cleat To Repair A Mahogany Guitar?

In our last episode, I glued the top and side cracks on the Gibson TG-1.  Now I'grand going to make some cleats to put behind the side cracks for reinforcement.  The cracks aren't too bad, simply since they're about three inches (75mm) long, I desire to make the repaired area strong so the cracks won't open if the guitar takes a hit to the side.

I accept a nice slice of mahogany for bracewood that I've been using for these kinds of repairs.  I cut off a hunk of it.

Then I stuck information technology on my trusty sanding lath with double-sided carpet tape.  The piece of mahogany is virtually i/4 of an inch thick to kickoff with.

Past belongings the workpiece upwards to the belt on the ROSS, I can go it downwardly to the thickness I desire and keep it reasonably foursquare.

Right now the coarsest belt I have is 120 grit, so this sanding takes a bit longer than usual.

Note to self:  lodge more belts.

I was aiming for .090 inches thickness, and I'k within .003.  Close enough.

I probably could have gone downwardly to .080, simply the wood gets a bit frail as it gets thinner, and I hate to start over.  I've broken these small pieces before when cutting them to shape.

The top of the guitar is nearly .090, and so I figure the cleats will be fine - not too thick.

Now we use a razor saw to carefully cut the foursquare cleats out.

I should probably make some kind of jig to do this, merely I honestly don't do it enough.  But a jig would make the cleats a bit more than precise.

Not that anyone really sees them in one case they go into the guitar.

Hither are the cleats later the edges are beveled with a small file.

The one on the right is a tad bigger - it will go in the eye where the cracks are a picayune farther apart.

Here's how I get the cleats into place.

I have some repair magnets from Stew-Mac.  They're super strong magnets - if you lot get your fingers in between two of them when they are pulling together, your fingers will get pinched!  They take lots of power.

I put double-stick tape on the back of a cleat, and then attach a magnet to the tape on the other side.  And then I use long tweezers which grip to the magnet.

So we put hide glue on the surface of the cleat to be glued over the repaired expanse.  I glue the cleats on with their grain running contrary to the grain on the guitar (up and downwardly in this example) to help add force to the repair.

The hide mucilage is viscous, so it wants to naturally adhere to the wood, which helps in this repair.

While I'm holding the cleat in place from the inside, I hold another magnet on the exterior of the trunk of the guitar and whap! the magnets are drawn together.

This motion picture was taken afterward the outside magnets were attached...

...equally y'all see here.

Stew-Mac sells these niggling 'handles' to adhere to i of the magnets.  This makes the magnets easy to hang on to.

The magnets' pulling together acts equally a clamp to concord the cleat in to place.  Super handy to take for this kind of catchy repair.

I wound upwards putting 3 cleats over the cracks.  The top crevice is actually very tight - information technology didn't necessarily have to be cleated.

Only I couldn't become the bottom crack fully aligned, so I went with the cleats but to make sure the whole repaired surface area is dainty and solid.

You can too see how the cracks spread merely to the original cloth lining - which helped stop the cracks from spreading when they first happened.

You tin see a third crevice near the bottom - it'due south behind the kerfing.  I was able to open it up a flake and get glue into information technology.  Since the lining supports it, information technology's a solid set.

The guitar must have taken a adequately hard hit at some signal.  But now information technology'southward good to get.

Side by side nosotros'll mix up some lacquer to impact up the repairs.

Source: http://crawlsbackward.blogspot.com/2014/12/using-cleats-to-repair-guitar-side.html

Posted by: sundberggrayoucand.blogspot.com

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