Tomorrow's Challenge:Broken Headstock on Kentucky KM-550

[sunburst]

Live and learn. Experience is the only compensation I got from this job, so I might as well enjoy it.

Yep. I wonder if we ever fully get beyond that...

[BadLiver]

OK, it's high-time I give an update, so here goes....

I'll admit, this repair was a bit of a reach for us. This is part of the reason I started this thread, to get advice from other folks that are likely to know more about it than me, and go from there. We have done similar repairs, but on acoustic and electric guitars, for the most part. These instruments offer a much larger gluing/epoxying surface, so I guess that's why we have had such a high success rate until now.

In a nutshell, the first repair failed. We gave it what we thought were ample "stress-tests" here. We applied a lot of external pressure in all directions of the repair. We played it a lot. I put a Tone Rite buzzer on it for three days, and it stayed in tune just fine. I shipped it to the customer. The headstock broke again somewhere during its FedEx journey. The customer wasn't happy. I had him send it back. We inspected the break closely. It failed this time on the next grain line over. I guess bad neck wood is bad neck wood.

So, this time I took the advice of others here, and put two splines on it. I made them as big as I could, without touching the binding on one end, or digging into the truss rod on the inside part. This repair held fine, and to my knowledge is still holding fine.

As far as I can tell, what the customer is upset about is the set-up, and a bit of the cosmetics related to the repair. We felt forced to ship the mandolin before we were really comfortable, and during the hot weather shipping, I think the lacquer shrunk back a bit around the splines, leaving some visible lines there. It was level when it left here, so I can only guess it was the heat. If it was more time related, it would have been nice to keep it another few days, and we could have easily fixed it here. I will say that, before we even started the repairs, I told the customer that I might not be able to hide it completely, and some of what we did may be visible.

Also, there was some dis-satisfaction with the height of the action. We offered to send a lower bridge saddle to fix this.

As the customer stated above, I did ask him to refrain from bringing the first failure up here just yet. I had hoped to follow up with a successful repair, and THEN tell all of you the rest of the story.

Nope nope, the customer appreciates the effort but he is upset with a crack that was absolutely, positively not just in the lacquer. The wood itself is cracked -- you can see it -- and the headstock/neck joint just isn't stiff now. Then the mando was shipped back with crazy high action (unplayable but for cowboy chords) which just wasn't in the cards. Something wasn't lined up correctly.

Seems to me the somewhat bizarre first repair with the smooth metal nail "dowels" just took out too much cross sectional wood area.

The oddest part of all this is that, contrary to what is implied in your post, the customer imposed no time pressure whatsoever -- even though this was in your shop for 7+ weeks. You could have held onto it for as long as you wanted.

Whatever it was, it's now additional firewood for a New England winter. Nitro is probably decent kindling.

[mirwa]

It's a really hard one, and I see it from both sides of the fence

First the crack will always remain, and it's possible that flexing of the neck will make that existing crack flex under the paint especially if it's nitro. Making it more distinctive.

Splines work magnificently and like John, I thought this was a here's my job rather than open for ideas, glad you followed up the original repair with splines.

To the owner, it's not a right off, everything is repairable and with a good setup based to you, it will be a beautiful instrument again. It may need some cosmetic paint work from the story line, but again very simple stuff, definetly not firewood.

Steve

[bob_mc]

The story continues; I just bought this mandolin on ebay from David (aka badliver) who listed it while posting in this thread:


Caveat emptor, indeed. Next mandolin I (can afford to) buy will be from guys like Steve.

EDIT: refund issued but on 3 -4 day hold:

Removed details so as not to seem inflammatory, please use caution if you are shopping in eBay for one of these.

[Dick Hutchings]

Before it goes in the fire, please send it to me.

[Jeff Mando]

---

[Emmett Marshall]

The story continues; I just bought this mandolin on ebay from David (aka badliver) who listed it while posting in this thread:...

Ouch!

Was this the listing on eBay?

[bob_mc]

Yes sir.