Headstock reconstruction. Aother

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After reading Tavy's excellent photo essay documenting headstock work, I figured, why not another?
This is not as involved as his, only a scroll replacement, but not a run-of-the-mill scroll replacement, so perhaps it is worth posting, and hopefully it will be of interest.
Here goes.

Someone bought this F4 in this condition. The scroll was apparently broken off, and rather than repair it, someone decided to... err...umm... streamline it (yeah, streamline is the word I'll use) along with refinishing the whole instrument. The new owner wanted the scroll replaced, so here's how I went about it.

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First, I resurfaced the part of the peghead where the new wood would be glued:

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...then chose a piece of mahogany from the scrap pile and cut a piece with grain oriented in the correct direction. Here, I'm marking the cut line with a pencil.
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As we know, the grain runs at an angle through the peghead of a neck without a grafted peghead as in this case. I had to come up with a way to hold the scrap piece at the correct angle to cut and surface the part to be glued. I superglued a scrap of spruce to the mahogany and cut it so that it supported the patch piece at the correct angle in the bandsaw and the spindle sander. That may not be easy to understand, but the pictures should help.
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After making the initial cut, I proceeded with chalk fitting the piece to ready it for gluing to the peghead.
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I cut the opposite side of the piece at an angle that gave me a good purchase for a clamp jaw, and glued the mahogany piece in place using hot hide glue.
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I left the the piece thicker than the peghead so that positioning would not be too difficult when gluing and clamping, so I had to shave it down to thickness after gluing it.
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I had this maple veneer that I intended to use for the front and back overlays, so using a straight edge to gauge progress, I shaved away wood until the thickness would be correct after gluing the front and back veneers.
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I brewed a small batch of very strong tea, soaked a piece of maple veneer in it for a while (a day or so), then soaked the veneer in vinegar and steel wool until the color was nearly black. That is the material I used for the patches to the front and back overlays. The veneer patches were glued with hot hide glue.
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I didn't get a picture if them, but I made scarf joints where the new veneer meets the old veneer on the peghead. I have seen too many butt joints eventually show up under a finish, as an indented line, to be comfortably with butt joints looking good long term, so that is the reason for the scarf joints.

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Here is the model I used for reproducing an authentic looking, historically correct scroll. This is the peghead of my F4. I scanned it and then adjusted the size of the image (photoshop) to print the correct size. A little double stick tape and I had an authentic outline to work to while cutting out the scroll.
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If you notice that the black veneer is absent in a couple of these shots, it is because I printed my templates earlier to make sure that i didn't cut away too much wood earlier in the process.

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After attaching the template, I cut the new scroll and marked it for the binding slot.
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There is no better way to cut the binding slot around the peghead scroll than an assembly of hand tools. I used these, and probably a few others, and cut the slot for the binding.

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Some Duco, some binding, some tape, and shockingly bright new binding is in place, then cut to size.
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At this point, I was faced with a minor challenge. Originally, Gibson sort of painted the veneers with some kind of black "paint" (probably shellac and pigment), but that had been removed from this mandolin, so I decided to try to match what was there. THe blackened veneer that I used was not as dark, so I applied a little black dye to the new veneer to improve the color match. I then scraped the binding clean, applied a little secret aging formula to the new binding, and sealed the new wood with some sprayed shellac.
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I oversprayed most of the peghead with blonde shellac and it blended flawlessly into the existing finish, so I assume that the person who refinished this mandolin used similar shellac of spirit varnish. Here it is finished and ready for the instrument to be set up.
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[sunburst]

Done.
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[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi John - Selecting your links comes up with an error message - " invalid attachment specified ". (See pic.) What i could see shows another great piece of workmanship. For some reason i really disliked that pointed headstock. Usually thing like that don't bother me,but that was dire !,
Ivan

[Tavy]

Images don't show for me either

Come on, stop keeping 'em secret

[tom.gibson]

I'd really like to see the photos, too, if they could be fixed.

[Clinton Johnson]

+1 I'd like to see photos also

[mandolinstew]

Photos not showing on iPad,will try computer tomorrow.I used to buy black shellac in New York City area,great for many uses.Made by Hauser.

[sunburst]

Most of them aren't showing for me now either. I don't know what's wrong with them, they were working when I posted them.

[jim simpson]

Even with the couple of photos that do show up, I can say well done! Well worth the effort.

[sunburst]

I'll try this; the condensed version.

[nordian]

That is nothing short of amazing. The builders here at the Cafe never cease to blow my mind with the things they are able to build and restore. I so greatly admire their talents and skills.