Re: Repairing an ugly side gouge/hole?
Originally Posted by
SincereCorgi
strong opinions about ... dime-size gouge in the side which had lost some material but not enough to be a hole.
Little story. I was working on an acoustic bass guitar for my son. I had the top and sides assembled and was just about the put the back on. But--it was late and I was tired and I knew better than to do anything in that situation--I looked at the top braces and thought: gee, I can carve those down just a little more before I go to bed tonight and then put the back on tomorrow.
So I got me a rotary tool on the end of my drill and went at the braces. All of a sudden there was this tremendous BANG. I thought that something in the shop had exploded. I looked around and didn't see anything. But I saw this really weird effect of a spotlight of light on the inside of the top of the guitar. That's weird, because the work light was overhead, and the only place it could be coming from was ...
Oh sxxx. It had to be coming through the side. I looked at the side and there was this hole, about a 25c piece size. Not a clean hole, either. What had happened was that the rotary tool thingie had traumatically disintegrated and flew off the head of the shaft, through my thin piece of wood that made up the side. I immediately realized that it would have been unlikely that it would have only bulleted in one direction ... and sure enough, 180 degrees from that first hole was a second.
So my choices were to throw the whole damn guitar away (no way); put together a kind of crappy plug (ick); or figure something else out. What I did was to clean the hole until it was relativley even. Then I fit a piece of the same wood into that hole, teased out the remaining threads of wood to blend into the patch, did a sawdust filler, and backed it on the inside with a wooden bandage that was bent to almost the same shape as the side. Looked absolutely ... OK.
Not too different than what you did. Of course I'm not a luthier and not a professional and I just kind of make it up as I go, but there it is.
belbein
The bad news is that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The good news is that what kills us makes it no longer our problem
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