Rescue

I rescued this guy from the Rose Bowl swap meet. One of the vendors was trying to get rid of it so I offered him $20 and he accepted. The history here is that the headstock broke about 4 years ago and it just sat in the back of the truck bouncing around ever since.

Let me start by saying the longer you wait to repair a break like this, the more tips and chips are lost. You can see there are some really big chunks of wood that are missing. These chunks are going to have to be replaced with some wood with a similar grain.

The grain is so worn down in the inside of the break that there is really nothing for the glue to stick too. In the initial shots you can see someone tried to re-glue the headstock back on using something like standard wood glue or a cheap polymer glue. It chipped off like it was nothing.

I'm gluing the headstock on using a Premixed Hide glue. Since the grain is so worn down I will go back and install bracing to keep the headstock from breaking again. After the glue up and bracing is installed, I will attempt to hide the break as much as possible using a bit of faux finish.
There really is no way to hide a break like this but it's nice not to see it unless your really looking.

Stay Tuned!