My beloved mandolin was DECAPITATED last night - what now?

[mandolirius]

Well, since you said it

I took this thread as an admonition to myself to at last order that pub prop I have seen fellow musicians use so often.

I tried that. Apparently the clamp left a mark on the finish of the jam host's table and now I'm being sued for damages.

[PJ Doland]

By the way...those of you dismissing the use of epoxy for headstock repairs might want to look at the Hamlett repair thread I linked to above and pay particular attention to what he used to secure the carbon fiber splints.

[Mike Romkey]

Sorry for your trouble. I feel your pain.

A banjo player friend convinced me a few years ago the only place for an instrument you're not playing is in the case. I've tried to follow that advice, and the few times I haven't disaster ensued.

The first time, a '21 A was left sitting on a stand in the family room and some of our 15-year-old son's friends came over to play video games. That was a neck dislocated at the heel, a fairly easy repair.

The other time I was doing some recording in my home office/studio, and had the same instrument sitting on a stand. We have louvered wooden closet doors that accordion open. I bumped one of the doors -- not hard! -- reaching for a mic cord, and if popped off the hardware and caught the mandolin a glancing blow. Broken bridge and a couple of gouges from the bridge adjusters I had to get touched up.

The case is the place for an unplayed instrument, friends.

[Stephen Perry]

I have a question for those posters who said that epoxy has no place in mandolin repair . . . . why not? What have you got against epoxy?

How does the next guy remove the repair, get back to wood, and redo everything? I don't know that epoxy has no place, but I don't own epoxy and haven't found myself handicapped. My repairs can be undone in the future.

Maybe this doesn't seem like something to be concerned about, but I have undone work during restoration that probably came from the mid to late 18th C, then the early 19th C, a smattering of work with initials & something like 1875, and a major restoration in the 1920s. All this work came out just fine so that major new damage could be addressed. Got back to the original late 17th C work and built it back up nicely. I don't think that is easy with epoxy.

I've also seen in the boat world epoxy creeping. Isn't that an issue?

[OldSausage]

But in another 100 years time, we'll be able to get that epoxy off real easy with our fusion-o-matic matter displacers.

[Verne Andru]

That suck! I feel your pain.

I just want to stress the point about professional use and insurance companies. If they know, or suspect, it is a professionally used instrument they may [probably will] not cover it.

[Mike Snyder]

A call to Weber would be the first thing that would come to my mind. They care about the instruments and I have no doubt that they have been involved in very similar situations.
Beside the point, I know, but I have a history of picking up and holding onto instruments left in precarious situations. I've had to deal with some nearly angry musicians, those who just would not understand. Seems I cannot be in a situation where I might wittness a disaster, so I pick them up gently and sit/stand exactly where they were left until the owner returns. Most already know me and accept my exentricities, the rest get the short explanation. My instruments are my closest companions and dear, dear friends to be cherished and protected.

[mandroid]

Well, since you said it

I took this thread as an admonition to myself to at last order that pub prop I have seen fellow musicians use so often.

thought I saw one that used the instrument weight to hold the support on the edge of a table
without the C clamp..
[anyone recall a source for those?]
Tale of Woe reinforces my hauling the floor stand to the Pub Jam , Here, to hang my mando
while I go to the W.C.

[P.D. Kirby]

My condolences and I feel your pain. Back in my teenage years 17 or 18. One night I was in a bit of a haze. I knocked my somewhat ragged but beautiful sounding J-45 off the stand and stepped on the lower bout crushing it, flat. I paid more to have it fixed than I paid for the guitar. I felt like I had lost a member of my family and I still cringe when I think about it.

[woodwizard]

Sorry for your loss. I am around instruments all the time that are being layed around and leaned against things and I got to tell you it still really makes me nervous when I see this. The main reason is I know if I sat on one I don't care where it is and broke it I would help pay part if not all of the repair or replacement for it. But that's just me.. The nervous part is when the (2) 12k fiddles are layed that way and my other friend leans his HD28 on things all the time not to mention one of the fiddle players Monty Grand Artist #66. Yup! I get a little nervous and either put mine on a disignated stand or in the case when I leave the room. Better safe than sorry folks. And still an accident could happen.

[belbein]

Brad, I don't mean any offence by this but if I had to weigh the expert opinion of a Lawyer against the expert opinion of an experienced Luthier with regard to the repair of a broken mandolin headstock, notwithstanding the aforementioned lawyer's not inconsequential experience building instruments, the scales would undoubtedly fall heavily on the side of the...

HHG everytime - epoxy is a poxy proxy. ...unless of course you intend it for gluing in the CF splines.

No offense taken. I'm no expert by any means. I just know epoxy well and know that if it weren't an instrument, that's what I'd use.

And by the way, my building experience is absolutely inconsequential.

[Bertram Henze]

I tried that. Apparently the clamp left a mark on the finish of the jam host's table and now I'm being sued for damages.

In the pubs I frequent, I'd challenge the management to show me which of the many dings and scratches was caused by the clamp. It's a rough environment. I have never heard anybody complain to the other clampers.

[ajr]

G'Day,

Bad luck with the damage to your Weber.

I received a Maurer (Larson) Mando from the U S (I'm in Australia) which had the headstock broken off in transit. It hadn't been detuned and had been, I assume, very cold in transit and it seems the head just snapped off. The packaging was unscathed.

Anyhow, I used Titebond on it, clamped it and allowed to set for about 36 hours all up and the problem was solved. That was many months ago now and all is well.

Apart from a more minor headstock repair and some very limited experience at school many years ago, I have had no wood working experience.

I wouldn't use epoxy. I went to a specialised wood tool supply shop and Titebond was what they advised. I think it gets into the pores of the wood more and gives a stronger joint. I just glued it and didn't use any dowels at all.

I have been very happy with the result.

Give it a go.

All the best

P S I'm very new at this posting caper so haven't really got the hang of it all yet.

[belbein]

I went to a specialised wood tool supply shop and Titebond was what they advised. I think it gets into the pores of the wood more and gives a stronger joint.

Not responding to you specifically, Alex, but the point about a "specialized wood tool supply shop." They may know wood, and they may know carpentry tools, but they don't know anything about epoxy. One of the great things about epoxy, and one of the frustrating things, is that it penetrates into the wood. That's why it's injected often in rotting wood. Nothing that I know of penetrates as well. And there's nothing that is structurally significant as epoxy with the right additives. Which doesn't mean it's right for everything.

It's fascinating to me how ghettoized the different skill areas are. This discussion about expoxy would never happen among the boatbuilders I know or have read. And when I was talking to a friend of mine who's a master wood-turner/carver, he had never heard of scrapers and warned me against them. It's tempting to think that people who work in wood would all be masters of the same universe of knowledge, but it's simply not the case. That's why the experts here are called "Luthiers," not "carpenters." I wouldn't want a carpenter to build me a mandolin. I wouldn't want a luthier to build me a house.

[Paul Kotapish]

My go-to guys for all serious instrument repairs are Frank Ford at Gryphon in Palo Alto and Paul Hostetter down in Bonny Doon.

There are many fine repair people out there, but very few have done more research, invented more tools and techniques, and shared their wisdom more openly than Frank--with Paul closing in behind him.

Check out Frank's big online resource for luthiers and musicians at www.frets.com. Endless hours of fascinating info and elaborate photo essays on complicated repairs. He has a half-dozen articles on peghead repairs in the luthier section. The photo essays on the snapped banjo head and the splintered peghead are probably most apt for this repair.

As for choice of glue, epoxy is fine for a lot of repairs, but this isn't one of them. Check out Frank's chart on which glues to use when:



Here are the footnotes for the chart:

* The solvents in cyanoacrylate and those needed to clean up cyanoacrylate and epoxy are destructive to traditional lacquer, varnish and shellac finishes, making these glues poor choices for many applications. Most epoxy loses strength at the temperatures reached in hot parked cars, so it may not be the best choice for highly stressed applications around the bridge and neck.

** These glues make it impossible to disassemble dovetail neck joints!

[tiltman]

Where did you get that stand???

Kirk

[belbein]

Frank Ford is trump! I'd believe him if he told me that the earth was spinning backward and that I should vote for the other guys.

Well, that the earth was spinning backward, anyway.

Thanks for posting it. This is a great chart. It's going up on the wall in my shop this evening.

[HoGo]

No one here seems to note one MAJOR reason for using HHG in violin repair - it prety much enables doing all those miraclous invisible repairs. I've seen fiddles crashed into pile of splinters put back so that you could not find even older previous not so good repairs even with magnyfying glass. You just cannot od that with epoxy, no way. Mandolin and guitar repair is long way behind top violin work cosmetically and very few mandolin/guitar restorers are doing that level of work. Epoxy joint will typically show dark glue line and that's just unacceptable in my book, even if it holds well for thousand years. You can use HHG and have invisible stable joint and need only to retouch any missing splinters or finish edges to make it undetectable. I've glued quite a few cheap guitar headstocks (actually one more is drying out as I type this) with standard HHG and on several you could hardly detect the crack in finish after repair. That's good enough for five minutes job with HHG and no touch up. I usually charge something like 10 EUR if I don't have to string it up or do more that just the glue up.

[belbein]

Frank Ford is trump! I'd believe him if he told me

... nearly anything. But he's wrong (or his chart is wrong) about epoxy "runs into cracks." It does. Too much. And you can control how much it does by heat and by additives. Maybe he's talking about another kind of epoxy? I don't know much about much, but I do know my epoxy. (At least, my West System 3. In which I can't even say I have NFI, as much money as I give them.)

[Paul Kotapish]

But he's wrong (or his chart is wrong) about epoxy "runs into cracks." It does. Too much. And you can control how much it does by heat and by additives. Maybe he's talking about another kind of epoxy? I don't know much about much, but I do know my epoxy. (At least, my West System 3. In which I can't even say I have NFI, as much money as I give them.)

Frank has several pieces about the uses of epoxy at frets.com, including an essay on the West System and controlling its thickness and viscosity via additives. There are other articles showing how to control it via heat.

In that article he notes that at the thinnest mixture it runs over surfaces and into joints. But I suppose there are cracks and then there are CRACKS.

As for Frank's chart, it is prefaced with a note saying "Remember, these are opinions."

The chart only indicates that--in Frank's opinion--epoxy is the worst choice for that particular application in comparison with the other options. YMMV, of course.

[HoGo]

There are cracks that are open on one side only or cracks that extend from edge of instruments towards center. I doubt you can saturate the crack with epoxy right to the end of the crack - even with the thinnest variety - BTW, how much does thinning influence joint strength? CA works itself into such spaces but is incredibly messy (I use it only where anything else won't work) Slightly thinned HHG can be forced into thinnest spaces with syringe (using modified nozzle with o-ring).

[belbein]

There are cracks that are open on one side only or cracks that extend from edge of instruments towards center. I doubt you can saturate the crack with epoxy right to the end of the crack - even with the thinnest variety - BTW, how much does thinning influence joint strength? CA works itself into such spaces but is incredibly messy (I use it only where anything else won't work) Slightly thinned HHG can be forced into thinnest spaces with syringe (using modified nozzle with o-ring).

West has a technical document on thinning. They say it does effect strength, but then they tell us how to do it.