Gibson Headstock repair

Brand: Gibson
Model: Les Paul

This one came into the shop with the headstock completly broken off. The customer stated that this was not the first or even the second time the neck was broken and repaired.

The break was bad. This is not the type of break where it can just be glued, clamped and is good to go. There will need to be some new wood added for support. This is also not this particular guitars first neck break.

I made a jig to glue the headstock back at the correct angle and placement.

A side shot of the neck being glued back in place.

The headstock glued back there was some visible damage to the headstock

I glued it in place just as a placeholder so i could get the alignment corrected

A quick router template I made.

After the first initial routing. this is where i am going to reinforce the area

The routed out area, ready for some new wood.

There was another small section where the wood was chipped out that needed to be replaced.

Glueing the new splines in place

The first set of splines after the glue up. I used a mahogany neck black i had in the shop to match the wood of the neck.

I ended up adding a third spline over the top to replace the middle area as well. This is after I carved and sanded the wood to match the carve of the neck.

Grain filling to help the new repair match . This leaves the grain of the wood filled in so you can see the grain through the finished paint.

After applying some coats of colored lacquer.

After a few coats of color I could move onto applying layers of clear coats. Many layers of clear coats.

Putting the tuners back on. You can see some visable marks where the new paint meets the old paint but the overal look turned out pretty good. Making a repair like this invisable is incredible hard. the first goal is for the repair to be stable and the instrument to play its best and then i try and hide the repair as much as posible.

A badly lit photo of the finished guitar neck

I was very happy with the way this repair turned out. After some fretwork, a lot of cleaning, installing a new bridge, tailpeice and some new strings this one is ready to rock again!

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