glue spot fills on a heavily dinged headstock and neck

[uriel]

hi,

 

ive been looking for a taylor sb2 for a few years now but one finally came up for sale on ebay. the headstock is in really bad shape with dings.

aside from colour matching, which im thinking should be a standard red mahogany stain in acetate, would a glue and buff work here or am i looking at a partial respray?

pics included, thanks

[uriel]

better pics

[Bizman62]

Hi and welcome!

That looks like spot filling would do, especially if you're rather going to play it than put it on a show. That's just some edges and corners knocked off.

The next question is the type of the original finish. If it's polyurethane, super glue would do fine. For nitrocellulose I'd use the same as it blends with the old one. Acetone should melt nitro quite easily and it would be easy to test on a ding that would be removed anyway. As nail varnish usually is nitro, you can also use nail varnish remover for testing - and also use clear nail varnish for repairing!

[Prostheta]

Agreed. A solvent-based finish like nitro can be reflowed and repairs will burn themselves into the existing finish. Test the lacquer in an inconspicuous place, or if you have a chip of lacquer, use that. Drop a drip of alcohol and see if it softens. If so, that's way way forward. The simplest repair is with shellac sticks and an alcohol lamp, however a bit of practice will be required.

For catalysed finishes, those that were chemically-cured on initial application you cannot really burn in a repair so they'll always have witness lines around and drop fills. Additionally, thinner CA may discolour the underlying wood and make a repair visible. Again, test if possible. I prefer water thin CA for repairs like this since it wicks into the cracks of the existing finish, but may also wick into the wood more. Drop fill with toothpicks rather than direct application.