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Crack In Walnut Body Piece


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Having some Walnut for a bass body, Cirrus style.

The outermost right walnut bodypart - surface to be glued to maple, se http://www.peavey.com/products/browse.cfm/...06%20Walnut.cfm - have a diagonal crack from top down towards the bottom, going about 2cm in at top and surfacing at the bottom (gluing surface).

The crack is a hairline and doesn't really facilitate any real glue to ooze in.

The issue is sound affecting and any possibility of the crack extending (from use).

I knew it had a crack in the plank but cut it out to see the extent of the damage.

Is such pieces useful or just to throw?

Edited by Metallion
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Hard to tell without a pic, but hairline checks in burl walnut is not uncommon. If the wood is dry and seasoned, and being that its going to be laminated to a stable sub surface, I'd say wick in some water thin CA and call it good.

I agree completely. I fail to see how glueing a piece of wood to itself ala fixing a crack can affect sound any more than glueing one piece of wood to another--which happens everywhere is guitar construction.

SR

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Hard to tell without a pic, but hairline checks in burl walnut is not uncommon. If the wood is dry and seasoned, and being that its going to be laminated to a stable sub surface, I'd say wick in some water thin CA and call it good.

Top img of plank with contour-outline of right piece + expected crack orientation.

Walnut-wood.jpg

Bottom pic of cut piece, crack still visible - chip upper left corner from crack (went through) - "side" surface to be glued to maple.

5cm thick WN piece, so bottom or top is cut 1cm.

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Personally, I would not use that piece.

Chris

+1. Cracks can be heard. So you have to stabilize them... the problem is that some pieces of wood just want to crack. Looking at the grain runout on that piece I would hazard a guess that you will be chasing cracks constantly through the build process as you release the wood during the cutting and shaping and routing.

I might slice it up thin and try to use it as laminate...

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  • 4 weeks later...
I would slice it in half and see what that does to the internal tension, although it is likely going to end up firewood.

Steve Vai's EVO guitar had a similar crack in the body.

Anyone knows how that got fixed?

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http://www.guitarwa.com/jtsb/dssb/200604/997.html

Heard about "vacuum" glue inserting - no home fix.

Edited by Metallion
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Well it certainly wasn't sliced in half to relieve internal tensions, that's for sure. :D

A crack on a finished instrument is completely different from raw lumber, so you're barking up the wrong tree (no joke intended). Your wood is going to do what it wants to do, whether you like it or not. That's the nature of the material! Cracks can be infilled (for better or worse) when the wood is stable, but if that crack just appeared then you need to figure out why the wood did that. Drying? Bad storage? Movement straight after cutting?

It is what it is, I'm afraid. If woodworkers had figured out some way of magically recovering wood normally consigned to losses, we would be seeing cheaper wood out there. It literally is as simple as "you can't stop the seasons", in more way that one....

Cut your losses before you start kicking yourself.

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Looks to me like the tension in the wood is just being released. That piece will most likly split again if you do any work to it. I use a lot of walnut, & sometimes I get a piece like this. Best to slice it up for binding or drop tops or something. But its not going to be any use as a body blank.

Id cut my losses & just get a more suitable piece. The headaches it will cause in the build are just not worth it

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