How not to repair

[mirwa]

The top is spruce, on the top they used maple putty to fill the voids.

I have no photo of that one as I have already sanded and cleaned the top for a full respray

Steve

[printer2]

Think farmers get a bad rap. They can do amazing work with bailing wire.



I seem to be missing something here. I can see the lengthwise 'splinter' that needed to be set back in, part of the X brace is missing at the break. The two cleats at the fracture look like they were meant to help solve the problem. Same with the stick between them. Actually the stick between looks to be a temporary piece, maybe to help with alignment, it has none of the other cleat's refinements or the slop around them. Might be a case of it being stuck in and more cause for concern trying to remove it. But the other two cleats, I do not see the damage they are there to repair.

[tahoeguitar]

I know no disrespect was meant to farmers. I have a great deal of respect for the repair abilities of farmers and ranchers. Been around them most of my adult life. I've seen some pretty slick stuff made out of junk, and some very effective and neat temporary repairs done with whatever was at hand... like bailing wire, duct tape, twine, and odd bits of sheet metal. One of the most respected repair guys on the Martin Forum is a farmer by trade and supplements it with luthiery.

[LSemmens]

Originally Posted by tahoeguitar

I know no disrespect was meant to farmers. I have a great deal of respect for the repair abilities of farmers and ranchers. Been around them most of my adult life. I've seen some pretty slick stuff made out of junk, and some very effective and neat temporary repairs done with whatever was at hand... like bailing wire, duct tape, twine, and odd bits of sheet metal. One of the most respected repair guys on the Martin Forum is a farmer by trade and supplements it with luthiery.

Any old bush mechanic knows that fencing wire and 100 mile an hour tape can fix anything, even Martin guitars. Of course, if you want your guitar to look pretty....take it to a luthier.

[mirwa]

Originally Posted by LSemmens

100 mile an hour tape can fix anything,.

Such an unusual phrase, "100 mile an hour tape" only ever heard that in my military day's, not perchance ex-military.

Steve

[LSemmens]

Nah! Just an old Ozzie.

[redir]

Originally Posted by printer2

Think farmers get a bad rap. They can do amazing work with bailing wire.



I seem to be missing something here. I can see the lengthwise 'splinter' that needed to be set back in, part of the X brace is missing at the break. The two cleats at the fracture look like they were meant to help solve the problem. Same with the stick between them. Actually the stick between looks to be a temporary piece, maybe to help with alignment, it has none of the other cleat's refinements or the slop around them. Might be a case of it being stuck in and more cause for concern trying to remove it. But the other two cleats, I do not see the damage they are there to repair.

I'm wondering if the purpose of that was to 'sister' the broken X-Brace. If so it was misplaced but imho probably not a bad idea to economically fix that broken brace. You can see that the alignment of the broken plate piece is way off. I can't imagine what the top would look like, the outside, with that big of a horst and graben fracture.

[maxtheaxe]

There's an old saying:

" Aint too much that a man can't fix, with $700.00 and a .30-06."

[LSemmens]

Originally Posted by maxtheaxe

There's an old saying:

" Aint too much that a man can't fix, with $700.00 and a .30-06."

I'm guessing that a .30-06 is a gun of some variety, but why $700?

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by LSemmens

I'm guessing that a .30-06 is a gun of some variety, but why $700?

30-06 is the caliber of ammunition fired by the Springfield rifle carried by the US military in WWI and the early days of WWII, and was also used in the M1 Garand carried in WWII and Korea. It remains an enduringly popular rifle cartridge used for deer hunting and other large game in the Lower 48 states of the US. Most firearms owners back home in Missouri that I knew would have a .22LR plinking/small varmint rifle, a 12 gauge shotgun and a .30-06, if nothing else.

It's not as popular a cartridge up here in Alaska, because if you should surprise a bear or need to shoot a moose, there are better, more powerful cartridges for those tasks than the .30-06. But there are still a lot of them up here.

As for the $700, I imagine that particular sum was chosen mainly for its meter, which becomes more apparent when you write out all the numbers in the rhyme:

"Ain't too much that a man can't fix,
With seven hundred dollars and a thirty-ought six."

The joke is that you can "fix" anything with enough money and a powerful rifle.

It's an example of rural humor that I've never encountered before, but it reminds me of the sense of humor of some of the guys my father used to go coyote-hunting with back in the Missouri-Kansas border country.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[D. Churchland]

I have brought it up before, but I feel as though there's a massive disconnect between wood science/woodworking and instrument repair. I do not understand why some people just do not research well enough or get told by some old codger "if you have to ask you shouldn't do it" so they either give up, or try it and destroy it.

Here's a few I've seen/repaired during my career.

Epoxy filled holes. Result: bushings with no wood contact in an LP style causing extreme tilt under tension.



Saddle cut incorrectly/too high, superglued back on, and broken again by putting the same saddle back in the slot.



Neck pocket routed to "correct neck angle" both of those feeler gauges are stacked on top of one another.



And my favorite...





The plywood on the inside is actually attached to the top "fill".

[mirwa]

I do like the last one .

Steve

[Truckjohn]

Re: the disconnect between "woodworking" and instrument building/repair....

The problem I have had is not that they can't understand - it's that they don't listen. They already "know" how to do all manner of woodworking... And so you get "Pfffftttt.... I know about glue and glue joints.... quit telling me that Gorilla glue will foam up and push this joint apart...."

And let's face it... The one single thing that prevents you from learning something is thinking you already know it....

[redir]

Originally Posted by Truckjohn

Re: the disconnect between "woodworking" and instrument building/repair....

The problem I have had is not that they can't understand - it's that they don't listen. They already "know" how to do all manner of woodworking... And so you get "Pfffftttt.... I know about glue and glue joints.... quit telling me that Gorilla glue will foam up and push this joint apart...."

And let's face it... The one single thing that prevents you from learning something is thinking you already know it....

One of my favorite quotes of all times is, "... there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."

Plus one to anyone who can identify the author

I got flamed on another forum once for my repair skills because I openly asked a question about a rudimentary repair that I had done many many times successfully but just wanted to know what I may have not known or what was possibly unknown. But the common flaming response was "if you have to ask then you must be incompetent." On the contrary, I'm trying to make my skills better

You never know if even though you are successful at doing something, you might just be doing it wrong for some reason. And of course you never know if there are better ways out there that you are not aware of.

[FolkRock Rules]

Originally Posted by redir

One of my favorite quotes of all times is, "... there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."

Plus one to anyone who can identify the author

I'd probably have never guessed Donald Rumsfeld (it's on Wikipedia), but once it's in context, I can see where he was coming from with that. "And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category [unknown unknowns] that tend to be the difficult ones."

But the common flaming response was "if you have to ask then you must be incompetent." On the contrary, I'm trying to make my skills better
You never know if even though you are successful at doing something, you might just be doing it wrong for some reason. And of course you never know if there are better ways out there that you are not aware of.