funkify

I dropped one of my guitars recently. Horrible mistake which I am embarassed to admit happened... please don't rag on me for it as I have suffered quite enough emotional distress already... as you can imagine I nearly had a heart attack! The corner of the headstock hit the carpet in my home pretty hard. Fortunately the headstock was not damaged at all, but the accident left the guitar with a crack in the paint in the neck joint area which wraps around from the back of the neck to the side of the fretboard where it meets the top of the guitar's body. There are some small spots along the crack where paint chips came off of the urethane finish -- a couple in the back, and a small one right along the fretboard binding in front. This guitar has a set mahogany neck in a mahogany body, and the neck joint itself seems fine, miraculously (I was so worried I'd ruined my favorite guitar). After 3 weeks it seems structurally solid, holds a tune, and plays just as great as before. My theory is that there was enough "spring" in the wood to keep the neck joint from being damaged, while the urethane finish was more stiff like a shell and thus wasn't quite so lucky. Anyway now on to the point, what should I do to fix the areas where the paint chipped off, as well as prevent any more paint from chipping off? Honestly I don't need it to be perfect because this is a guitar that I never, ever want to sell. But I don't want it to be noticeably damaged either, and I definitely don't want any further chipping to occur along the crack. I was thinking of using car touch-up or model car paint, but before I did anything that could be dumb I wanted to ask here first as I am defintely no expert on paint. I searched the forum and didn't find anything that seemed to apply, but if anyone could offer helpful advice on what to use and how to go about patching this up, I would be EXTREMELY grateful. Thanks in advance for any helpful advice that any of you out there can offer.

Thanks for the good advice guys. I'll do this next time I restring (which won't be too long as I play this guitar quite a bit) and report back with results. Any more advice is definitely appreciated... I'll check back in again before I actually do the job.

I've got a beautiful Dean acoustic/electric that looks incredible, and plays and sounds as good as it looks. There is just one little thing that bugs me about it, though. The ends of the frets are slightly rough, and I want to round them down just a bit. I was wondering, what would be the best way to go about this without ruining the fretboard's finish or the binding on the neck? Should I use sandpaper? A file? What kind of sandpaper/file? Will masking tape be enough to ensure I don't scratch my baby? I love this guitar, if I had to give up all my guitars but one I would keep this one, so I wanted to seek some advice before taking the plunge. Hopefully some of you out there can help me out so I don't mess anything up! FWIW, I did search the forum before posting and didn't find anything about this.

Doesn't that set too quickly to be useful? When I've used superglue, it's only workable for like a split second.

Ha ha. Seriously, what is CA glue?

What is this "CA glue" you speak so highly of?

I suppose I would be willing to do drilling and sanding, but I really don't want to have to refret this guitar. I bought it used but ever-so-slightly used, and the frets are practically brand new. If I used wood dowels and did all the sanding would I have to take off the frets to do it? Also, where could I get rosewood dowels? Or other woods? I saw in another thread where someone mentioned getting a radius block and sanding inlays against the block in order to avoid refretting, but since dowels would be so small, it seems like it would be very difficult if not impossible to maintain the same sanding direction on such a small dowel. That seems more difficult than putting in block inlays, which is what I'd actually prefer. Camouflaging the dots is actually my backup solution because I imagined that it would be much easier to do than putting in block inlays. Regarding clear nail polish, thanks for sharing the idea, although I think I'll pass on that. Nail polish tends to chip and flake after time, not to mention drying rather thick. I do have a similar idea that I will probably test out first, though -- those furniture touch-up pens. Thanks for the advice so far -- I really appreciate it, and please keep it coming!

Hi, I just bought a used guitar with dot inlays that appear to be abalone, in a rosewood fretboard. I'm lookng for ideas on how I can "camouflage" the inlays. Basically I want the guitar to look like it doesn't have any inlays at all. I don't want to go to all the trouble of removing frets, drilling, sanding, etc. I'm not looking for perfection, basically I just want the inlays not to be so eye-catching. And if my fretboard gets darker in the process that's quite alright. Is there some dyeing, staining, or other coloring process I can do to my fretboard and/or inlays to "camouflage" them?