buggered my neck! too hard with the rasp, how do i fix?

[simon1138]

Hello,

I was trying to take down a bit of wood on the back of my first neck and went too hard with the rasp. 

there is a split and the truss rod showing. 

Will this cause issues or just an asthetic issue? How could I fix it?

Thanks

[Bizman62]

I had a similar issue with the truss rod, in my case I had carved the channel too deep for the truss rod nut. That was fixed by carving all the paper thin wood off and making a plug. In my case it works as there was plenty of empty space, the plug was about 3 mm thick at the thinnest. I also made a groove to match the cylindrical nut so there was even more glueing surface on the sides. If your nut is right on the surface my fix will not work in which case a new neck or at least a scarf jointed piece is the only option.

The split near the G tuner on the headstock doesn't look too severe to cause structural issues.

[mistermikev]

i did this once... on a lovely piece of birdseye.  thought "i can go another mm deep" - nope.  tossed it and started over.  I know that's hard to hear... but I'm glad i did.  despite how much you've invested in this neck... when you start to think about how much total time you have invested in a build... at least for me - don't want to be unsatisfied at the end.  worse yet put another 10 hours into a fix when you could have spent the time building new.  that said - i never like to waste wood and i was ashamed to toss that neck.  You have to make the right choice for you.  never hurts to try and fix... but don't be afraid to chalk it up to learning experience and start over either.

I think yours - it's hard to tell... if that is right under the end of the rod - it's going to be problematic because that is where the pressure will be - the ends and the middle.  if it's say "an inch or two" away from the pressure points... less likely to be a structural problem.  you also have to consider "how thick is the wood in that area now?"  

unfortunately any routing is going to be very dangerous as your bit could hit your truss.  you could manually carve out a stripe and put a skunk stripe in.  You could sand the backside of it flat enough to get the truss out... then sand it a bit more flat... then add a contrasting piece of wood and it will look like a feature... but a lot of work!

here's hoping something there helps.

 

[Bjorn.LaSanche]

I did the same thing on my V build. I wound up using strips of silk from an old tie I never wear and fiberglass resin to patch over the area. I used three layers of resin soaked silk. The first about 3/4” larger than the damaged area. With the next two overlapping the previous.  Then I painted on more resin over than and when dry samded it back down level.   The neck has been under tension with strings for a few months with no issue.  I got the idea from a video by the GuitarDoctor off YouTube. I used silk instead of what he used as the tensile strength of silk is vastly superior to any other fabric while remaining very thin.  The downside is that you have to pint over the repair to hide it.