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Posted

Hey Everybody.

Just today I bought a Les Paul with a broken off headstock. It broke very cleanly, and I am not left with much surface area for glueing.

Ive fixed a headstock break like this before, but it had a lot of long pieces of wood sticking out that easily fit back together and deffinetly helped make it stronger.

Basically I need opinions on how to glue this baby back together and not be afraid the headstock is gonna fly off while im playing. The only thing i could think of is using dowels.

I did my best to take clear photos on my camera phone :D , so bear with me.

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Hopefully I posted these correctly! :D

Posted

If you feel adventurous, you could pull the fretboard off, remove the rod, plane the end of the neck down, and attach a new DIY headstock with a scarf joint. You could even shave off the heastock veneer and put it on the new headstock.

It might actually be easier to remove the neck and buy/make a new one from scratch, re-using the fingerboard and rod.

Other than that, yeah..dowels. But that one's pretty bad.

Posted (edited)

I'd have a go at just glueing that one. It's a nasty break but I'm sur ethat it'll hold. The other option would be to glue and clamp but then route two slots in the back and use infill strips to bridge the break either side of the truss rod.

A bt of shaping and painting and no one will know!

http://www.guitarrepairshop.com/repair1930epiphone.html shows a similar final join of about 30 degrees and even better, your has a rough surface hence in#creasing the surface area.

Edited by chunkielad
Posted

Wrap a bit of greaseproof/cookie paper around the truss rod before you glue it up - like a tube, which you can pull out of the truss rod hole when you release the clamps. You don't want to succeed in this repair only to find you've seized the trussrod. Remember to slacken the rod before you clamp up too!

I agree with Chunkielad in that it looks pretty clean as a break. A fracture is a lot easier to mend than a tear. If all the parts sit back snugly in their original positions like a jigsaw then you'll be fine.

I think the biggest problem will be your endgrain gluing - as posted on the forum previously (a cabinet makers trick no less) by someone other than me, you can lightly dampen the endgrain edges with a little water-thinned wood glue prior to full stickup to "pre-glue" to help the glue bite better. Be careful not to fill up the snug fit you've got though :-)

Best of luck. Take you time and please post progress - I'm betting you'll succeed on this one with a bit of effort!

+1 on the ebony too. No harm in adding extra strength once it's all glued up.

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