aarongreen -> RE: Crack in my guitar! (May 17 2012 1:32:07)
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Oh yes, it true. Why violin restorers who can slip in a grain line and make them blend well get paid very handsomely. It can also take literally months to touch up. Guitar owners have it easy by comparison. Cost wise. Karl is a longtime violin restorer and his background is in fine art. He will be the first to tell you that guitars are much harder. The reason is simply they are not nearly as well engineered and they have no arching compared to fiddles and have a relatively clear finish. He can still make stuff disappear but the number of times I've talked him from throwing the guitar or himself off a bridge is pretty impressive. But so is his work. Here's an example, on the 65 Fleta I sold last year there were two small cracks in the perfectly quartered dark brazilian back. They were almost closed but not quite enough. The finish on those guitars, from that vintage is a homemade amalgamation of lacquer, shellac and who knows what else. Its rather opaque, orangish, crackled all over the place and alligator skinned. Karl put in two or three different sets of splints in the rosewood until we realized that the finish was completely f*cking with us. He then pulled a tiny little bit and realized that the wood was much darker without the finish than it was under the finish. Then he made about 40 different kinds of varnish and laid them out on rosewood pieces that were similar, put them in a light box and let er rip. When he came up with the one that matched, he redid the splints yet again and went to it with the varnish. Even that was tough as he had to add judicious bits of color as he built up the varnish. Once he overshot the mark, which he did not realize until the final rub out. So back to bare wood. It took 4 months. In the end the repairs are completely invisible, you simply can not find them unless you know they are there and are looking very closely. The difference was in the crackle, the newer varnish has a slightly different crackle pattern but it's damn close. My point is this, unless you have someone who is pushing the envelope of what is possible in restoration, like Karl.... you are going to end up with a visible repair. Better to take care of your guitar than put in new wood. Unless you pull off the fingerboard and steal wood from under it, you are in for a tough time to match spruce under a clear finish. Anders, I never thought this was a case of a mistake or less than ideal construction on your part. That crack looks like the guitar dried out, which is out of any luthier's control.
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