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I'm dealing with my first broken headstock. I've read a couple threads and watched several YouTube videos on the topic. This break looks a lot worse than any of them that I've seen repaired.

Is there any way for me to approach this on my own? Time to hack the neck off and refinish?

Thanks!

Wow!! That's not good. Build a new neck.


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That repair will require splines to make it solid again.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

It can be done. Won't be easy, won't be pretty. As Brian says, splines are the answer. Get it all back together, and then rout for several splines, and glue them in. Reshape the neck to the original contour. Refinish in a dark color to hide the work (if you want), or put on clear to show off your handiwork.

Good luck, and be patient! I am reminded of what uber repairman Don Teeter always said - "Just another day in the splinter factory!". This situation would definitely apply.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I'm not a fan of splines the way most people do it (short, shallow and with square ends)
It just provides a weak point at the end of the splines to break again.
If replacing the neck is not possible, I'd be scarf jointing a new headstock onto the neck shaft down past the break.

I NEVER did splines with square ends - I have an engineering background, after all.
And I went as deep as possible, because the point was to repair the break.

Routers leave nice round ends - so make the spline round on the end to fit.

Square ends must have been made with chisels.... just saying.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Still effectively forming an end grain to end grain glue joint which would be a weak point.
When I said square I meant perpendicular to the spline more than the plan shape.

We've been migrating away from splines over the years and instead with the jig that Dave Collins created and has been published here and elsewhere before we have been having excellent results with no splines. Mind you.... there are times to use them but when you can pick and prod the fibers back into place and get a very good fit and then use the Collins head stock jig for multi-axis clamping our results have been excellent.

We have a guitar in the shop to repair a head stock break, an SG and G*bson which are well known in the trade for not surviving falling over very well head stock wise... This guitar had a head stock break in the past that we repaired and now it fell over again and broke again.

It did not break where we repaired it. It has a fresh new break near by. We'll fix her up again for it's owner who we all know, Andy Birko and it will be fine again with no splines.

Again there are times to use them but there are also reasons to not get involved with repairs that may qualify such as someone else has already done a terrible job on the repair.... Danger Will Robinson. Head stock breaks without turning it into a major rebuild of that section of the neck.... really only have one shot at getting them right. Once someone else has hacked it all up I'm not all that interested in taking it on and will refer it to someone else who I don't like.....

Estimating here but I suspect that we repair a head stock break every couple of weeks with our jig and we have never had one break again in the ten years that I've been involved with repair work.

If you ever break one don't mess with it, take the tension off the strings, support the broken area well for transport to your Luthier if you are not tooled up for these. The better the pieces can be pieced back together the easier the repair will be.

Here's a link to a video that Dave Collins made years ago on the subject of head stock repair.

Hope this helps.

https://youtu.be/D6lzTM__Yrs

Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough, but I don't see how I could scarf this without removing the truss rod...and the fretboard.

That would be the really hard way.

What does the client have to say about the appearance afterwards, and any money he's willing to spend?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I agree with Hesh and pretty much abhor splines.....I never use them unless I see no other way to make a quality repair. And I just do not see enough long grain engagement at this break to glue it back together and have it hold without them.....

When do use them run them as deep as possible, right up to the very bottom of the FB if I can. One each side of the truss rod as close as I comfortably can. 3/8" wide about 2-1/2" to 3" long (with round ends of course!)

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Thanks for all the feedback. Not that this wouldn't be a valuable project to undertake, but I am leaning toward replacing the neck. I like Dave Collins' jig, but I do not foresee doing enough of these repairs to make the building of that tool a worthwhile effort for me right now.

It will be a learning experience just taking this guitar apart I suspect.

Hey Leighton Robbie O'Brien also has a video out here showing how he pieces things back together as we do and then be clamps it all up without a jig. You might want to find that video and then see how well you can pick and prod any errant fibers to see how well you can get things to fit. If you can get a great fit using Robbie's method without a jig you might be able to repair this.

What do you have to lose, you can always go to plan B and make a new neck but you just might find that you don't have to. It's been our experience that these repairs are invisible and as such people forget it ever happened since there are no reminders AND if done well it's as strong as the original unbroken neck.

Anyway hopefully something here will be of value to you.

I'm not a big fan of splines either, for one thing they don't add much side grain gluing surface, and depending on their geometry, they may introduce new end grain etc problems. They may also make future repairs more difficult, and its hard to make them look good, especially in light woods. Depending on the value of the instrument, I would consider backstrapping the headstock, after carefully aligning and gluing the break. It would involve thinning the back of the headstock and enough of the neck for a sheet of wood to bridge the break, at lest 40-50 mm down the neck. The backstrap should be 1-2 mm thick, and bent to conform to the neck / headstock transition, and to "feather" into the shape of the back of the neck. More work than splines perhaps, and more finish repair, but not nearly as much as a new neck.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Maybe something along the lines of a ship builder's scarf joint would apply here if you don't want to use splines.

You could simply scarf out both sides of the neck and use a fill shaped like the cut and then just finish over. You could just cut it to go around the truss rod. It'd be a big chunk of wood but it's be pretty solid provided you do a good job of joining the sides.



Just thinking out loud, Here's a drawing to illustrate what I'm suggesting. I've only done it on smaller things but not a neck. Be worth a shot at least to save it.

The last backstrap repair I did was 3mm thick.
It was to fix a previous repair which had been done with splines and had rebroken across the ends of the splines. The shame was that it had originally been a nice, easy, with the grain break which only needed gluing. The splines forced a cover up refinish to the area and set it up for the second break at the weak point created at the ends.

On this break here, I'd be concerned that even a backstrap would be insufficient. Probably Ok against string tension, but providing no real resistance to a knock on the front of the headstock.

Dan, a cut like that would dig into the truss rod. Even if it did not, it would not provide nearly as large gluing surface as the traditional backstrapping, plus there would be short grain / end grain problems etc, it would be difficult to hide the repair etc. A backstrap normally covers the entire back of the headstock and sometimes extends quite far down the neck. Here's a good discussion about the same thing from over on Mandolin Cafe, that shows a beautifully executed backstrapping repair done by Paul Hostetter.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?87024-How-would-you-fix-a-headstock-problem-like-this/page3

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Nice looking repair, I do question why Paul used 3 veneer layers, with the centre cross grain. That would seem to significantly weaken the backstrap.

I probably won't touch it for about a month, but I'll let you know how it went. I will see if i can successfully fit it back together carefully and worst case scenario I'll do a complete referb.

I'm not sure why he did that, for decorative effect perhaps? My backstraps are usually about 2 mm thick, and solid. Even so, I'm sure Paul's laminated version is plenty strong, and more than adequate as a reinforcement of the break, from the force exerted on the headstock by the pull of the strings. I agree that with a short break like that, the joint may still be somewhat vulnerable to knocks and sudden impact, but should last for a long time with normal handling of the instrument. And, if it should break again, the repair will likely be much easier than if there were splines in there.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I exaggerated it for the drawing. Just throwing ideas out.