Filling up butchered cavities?

[G_urr_A]

I started making a guitar about 9 months ago in school, and then I continued at home, working a little bit every now and then. The guitar is now in playable condition. However, as I didn't know anything about making guitars when I started, and since I got the wood for free through school, I didn't make any templates for the routing that was done. So it was all routered free hand, and it looks that way too. It's only the neck pocket that is really ugly, but everything else could really use some working on too.

So, what I'm wondering is what you think about the idea of routing the messed up routs bigger and with square corners, glueing in a piece of the same wood originally used (birch) and rerouting the cavity. How would it affect strength and tone of the guitar?

[Scott Rosenberger]

That's sounds like the right thing to do. Just keep your tolerances tight and you should end up with a better guitar than before

[Drak]

That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do, I've done it several times to guitars for much the same reason you're doing it, they were bodies from years ago that were good enough to keep, but I had either changed my mind about pkps or bridges or whatever, and I filled in the cavities and re-routered them, but I did put a new topper on it so no one would ever be able to tell.

I have a pic of a body I did that too last month, I'll try to post it when I get home tonight.

BTW, I use the same router template that I'm going to use to route the new cavity with to mark the filler wood out with, so it pretty much almost drops right in the hole with very little glue needed to fill up any crevices...

[Hotrock]

Filler and paint makes things what they aint

[skibum5545]

My High school's sets crew for theatre has a motto for when they mess up:

PAINTING WILL FIX IT!!

If you paint the body after filling in the rout, no one will know that you even messed up at all

$.02

skibum5545

[mdw3332]

I will quote from a wise one:

"Y'know, I have learned over time to make the most of my mistakes, it's a 'state of mind'. Instead of getting bummed, I figure out a way to actually make it work for me, 'cause I've made soo many mistakes!"

That's from an e-mail Drak sent me last year. I am pretty sure that you are assigned X number of screw-ups by the guitar gods when you start a new project. The keys are: Almost anything is fixable, and Don't keep making the same mistakes.

If you saw my Zebrawood post, I mentioned the screw up routing the control cavity. I was ready to burn it and then decided the wod was too nice (and expensive) to waste, so I plugged it. Learned something and still have a viable guitar. See the left side. Also, note the string ferrule holes, you have got to be really careful drilling those in real dense wood - easy to got off line, even with a drill press.

Marty

[G_urr_A]

Yeah, since I will most certainly put some veneer over this body anyways (the birch wasn't the cleanest in the world. knots and stuff. free though...) it won't matter with the looks. So, I'll go ahead and do this. (Some day)

[guitar_ed]

Hi,

I agree with Hotrock, especially if you are going to paint it. Filling with wood putty might be easier than trying to fit in bits of wood.

But in the end result:

Guitar Ed

Advice worth what you paid for it. Nothing.

[G_urr_A]

After thinking and being busy with other stuff for a while, I just had a little more time to think about this. The guitar has a Floyd, 2 HBs, and a bolt on neck, and the "walls" between the cavities or no more than 2-3cm (1").

So I'm thinking I'd be better of just cutting away the whole cavity area, so I practically will have a deep tenon (going all the way from top to back) that is bolted to the neck. Would that cause any stability/strength problems?