How to glue a guitar at home. What glue to use for guitars How to glue the soundboard of an acoustic guitar

What kind of glue to use to glue a guitar is a question that will definitely arise in front of you if you just touch upon the repair of guitars, not to mention the manufacturing. Today you can buy a huge amount different adhesives, but not all of them are suitable for guitar. Let's discuss what adhesives can be used when making guitars.

Guitar adhesives can be divided into those that can be used to glue the entire guitar and those that are used to perform only certain operations when some special qualities are required.

Wood glue, or rather flesh, bone or fish glue

This is a traditional guitar glue. To make guitars, you will need to find the highest quality one. Moreover, it is important that it is stored correctly and does not lose its properties and is not contaminated with all kinds of organisms. Bone glue is less durable and for making guitars it is better to find bone glue. Fish glue is the most durable.

You will be making glue like a real guitar master. Gluing will not look somehow ordinary - it is a whole action. Some people call the cooking method too tedious, but good things don’t happen quickly. The glue must be prepared in a water bath. In fact, everything is very simple, you just need to maintain the correct proportions and temperature conditions.

Cooking rules. Soak for several hours, only covering the glue with water. Once it swells, it needs to be heated in a water bath, that is, the container with glue needs to be placed in a container with water and this water must be heated. For example, a children's saucepan with a hole in the lid into which a cup with glue and a lid is inserted is very suitable. You need to heat until the contents turn into a homogeneous mass, easily spreadable, approximately the consistency of liquid kefir. The glue cools down quickly, so you need to work without much hesitation. The room should be warm. After cooling, the unused mass loses part of its adhesive ability. So soak it thoroughly. Unmelted glue can be stored in the refrigerator for some time. Dry glue is also best stored in a cool, dry place.

Advantages. When glued correctly, it is very strong. Quite fluid until it cools down. Dries into a hard structure and is believed to the best way suitable for musical instruments, since it transmits vibrations without unnecessary losses.
Flaws. Very fragile - easily chips on impact. But you can add PVA-like glue to it, which slightly plasticizes it. There are other additives too. It gives a lot of shrinkage, i.e. it requires a very precise fit of the surfaces to be glued, but it’s impossible to do otherwise in guitars. It reacts strongly to humidity conditions, as does the whole guitar.

Ready-made wood glues

Not all ready-made wood glues are suitable for making guitars. You could even say that almost all ready-made PVA and PVA-like wood glues are not particularly suitable for making guitars. Only the rare ones. The reason for this is precisely the plasticity of the gluing. In general, they are prepared for carpentry, and not for transmitting vibrations in a guitar. Therefore, you need to look for ready-made wood glue, which, when dried, gives a solid structure.

How to check. You need to dry it a little and pick it out with a chisel, there should be no rubber. It should either prick or be difficult to cut.

Glue - which fits perfectly- this is American Titebond Original Wood Glue, once you find it, you don’t have to look for anything else. It dries into a prickly structure, like traditional joinery. Perfect! But only red glue as in the picture has such qualities, the rest have some plasticity.

This red glue can rightfully be called the number one guitar glue.

Cooking rules. I squeezed it out, smeared it, pressed it down. (It happens that it is too thick and needs to be diluted with water.)
Advantages. Can't count it enough. He has all the virtues. They can glue everything.
Flaws. I find it difficult to answer. It’s just that it’s not so easy to buy it, so when it’s finished, it becomes very unpleasant in my soul.

Epoxy adhesive

For some reason, this glue causes an “allergic” reaction in many people, saying that they should never make guitars anywhere. I don't want to argue with this. It is important to understand that everything cannot be used if it is used incorrectly. There is no point in epoxying the entire guitar. So the question is not even worth it, but there are some works where epoxy resin completely justified and irreplaceable, thanks to its main property.

Epoxy glue or epoxy resin is a glue that does not shrink when it hardens - no matter how much you spread it, apply it, so much will remain after hardening.

Therefore, in repairs, when it is impossible to adjust the surfaces to be glued, resin has no analogues.

Preparation. Questions remain in terms of what the ratio of resin to hardener should be. There is a recommendation from the instructions 10:1, but this is not enough in some cases with suspicious hardeners. It happens that you come across 1:6 - this is an unmistakable combination. You need to experiment with your glue. It is very convenient to use two syringes for mixing. 20 cubes for resin and 2 cubes for hardener. So it can be stored in syringes by closing the syringe like a cap with the base of a needle, which you can bite off and bend.

Superpower number two - epoxy glue has high fluidity. It’s good when it flows where it should and bad when it flows further where it shouldn’t.

Water-based adhesives cause wood to swell, which can become a problem in some jobs. The resin absorbs well into the wood, which can also be a problem, but the wood does not swell. To reduce fluidity, you can simply wait a while after mixing the components until the fluidity decreases, but also do not miss the moment when the glue becomes too thick, this can significantly reduce the quality of gluing.

Uncured glue can be easily washed off with white spirit or kerosene. There is no rush during spreading and squeezing. For example, you can install guitar frets on epoxy resin, then all the space in the cut will be filled.

Super glue

This glue is a specific glue for special type works We must remember that it is very toxic, and inhaling it is dangerous. Make sure that after drying something remains and holds - the quality is very different, you need to find a good one.

The main property of superglue is not its hardening speed, but its superfluidity.

Sealing mini-cracks into which you can’t put regular glue – this is an area where superglue is unique.

What kind of glue to use to glue a guitar is a question that will definitely arise in front of you if you just touch upon the repair of guitars, not to mention the manufacturing. Today you can buy a huge number of different glues, but not all of them are suitable for guitars. Let's discuss what adhesives can be used when making guitars.

Guitar adhesives can be divided into those that can be used to glue the entire guitar and those that are used to perform only certain operations when some special qualities are required.

Wood glue, or rather flesh, bone or fish glue

Cooking rules. Soak for several hours, only covering the glue with water. Once it swells, it needs to be heated in a water bath, that is, the container with glue needs to be placed in a container with water and this water must be heated. For example, a children's saucepan with a hole in the lid into which a cup with glue and a lid is inserted is very suitable. You need to heat until the contents turn into a homogeneous mass, easily spreadable, approximately the consistency of liquid kefir. Cooling quickly, the glue gelatinizes, so you need to work without much hesitation. The room should be warm. After cooling, the unused mass loses part of its adhesive ability. So soak it thoroughly. Unmelted glue can be stored in the refrigerator for some time. Dry glue is also best stored in a cool, dry place.

Advantages. When glued correctly, it is very strong. Quite fluid until it cools down. It dries into a hard structure and is considered to be best suited for musical instruments, as it transmits vibrations without unnecessary loss.
Flaws. Very fragile - easily chips on impact. But you can add PVA-like glue to it, which slightly plasticizes it. There are other additives too. It gives a lot of shrinkage, i.e. it requires a very precise fit of the surfaces to be glued, but it’s impossible to do otherwise in guitars. It reacts strongly to humidity conditions, as does the whole guitar.

Ready-made wood glues

Not all ready-made wood glues are suitable for making guitars. You could even say that almost all ready-made PVA and PVA-like wood glues are not particularly suitable for making guitars. Only the rare ones. The reason for this is precisely the plasticity of the gluing. In general, they are prepared for carpentry, and not for transmitting vibrations in the guitar. Therefore, you need to look for ready-made wood glue, which, when dried, gives a solid structure.

How to check. You need to dry it a little and pick it out with a chisel, there should be no rubber. It should either prick or be difficult to cut.

This red glue can rightfully be called the number one guitar glue.

Cooking rules. I squeezed it out, smeared it, pressed it down. (It happens that it is too thick and needs to be diluted with water.)
Advantages. Can't count it enough. He has all the virtues. They can glue everything.
Flaws. I find it difficult to answer. It’s just that it’s not so easy to buy it, so when it runs out, it becomes very unpleasant in your soul.

Epoxy adhesive

For some reason, this glue causes an “allergic” reaction in many people, saying that they should never make guitars anywhere. I don't want to argue with this. It is important to understand that everything cannot be used if it is used incorrectly. There is no point in epoxying the entire guitar. So the question is not even worth it, but there are some works where epoxy resin is completely justified and irreplaceable, due to its main property.

Epoxy glue or epoxy resin is a glue that does not shrink when it hardens - no matter how much you spread it, apply it, so much will remain after hardening.

Therefore, in repairs, when it is impossible to adjust the surfaces to be glued, resin has no analogues.

Superpower number two - epoxy glue has high fluidity. It’s good when it flows where it should and bad when it flows further where it shouldn’t.

Super glue

This glue is a specific glue for a special type of work. We must remember that it is very toxic, and inhaling it is dangerous. Make sure that after drying something remains and holds - the quality is very different, you need to find a good one.

The main property of superglue is not its hardening speed, but its superfluidity.

Sealing mini-cracks into which you can’t put regular glue – this is an area where superglue is unique.

Any musical instrument needs to be handled with care and proper storage. Guitar is no exception. In no case should it be placed near a radiator or near a window, since heat and bright sunlight the tree is drying out. Because of this, cracks may appear on the body of the instrument, and the heel of the neck risks delamination.

The guitar does not tolerate rough and unceremonious handling: very often the instrument suffers when dropped, from all kinds of “bruises” or during improper transportation.

Any damage not only affects the sound of the guitar, but often completely destroys it. However, in most cases the instrument can be repaired.

If damage appears on the soundboard or neck of your six-string friend, do not rush to part with it. Now we will tell you how and with what to seal cracks on a guitar.

Guitar glue - overview of options

The guitar is a very sensitive instrument and this should be taken into account when choosing glue and conducting repair work. The adhesive composition should not interfere with the unique resonating properties of noble wood.

In this case, the glue must reliably connect the elements being glued, because very often cracks form in places of greatest load.

What glue is best for guitar repair?

There are several options:

Titebond is a one-component, universal wood adhesive popular all over the world. Perhaps this is the most ideal guitar repair glue.

Titebond is resistant to moisture and elevated temperatures. The composition sets almost instantly and firmly connects the bonded surfaces; you just need to press them firmly against each other for a while.

Hide wood glue. It is produced from the inner part of raw leather (hide), tannery waste and gelatin.

This glue requires preparation. To obtain a ready-to-use solution, you need to pour the dry components with water in the proportions specified by the manufacturer and leave to swell for a while.

The swollen substance is boiled until tender in a water bath. The glue turns out to be quite fluid when warm. As it cools, it forms a solid structure and therefore does not disturb the acoustic properties of wood. With strict adherence to the technology, it is possible to achieve a special strength of the adhesive connection.

EDP (epoxy glue)- a universal two-component adhesive, which is sold as a mixing kit. It directly includes epoxy resin and hardener.

Preparing the composition is as easy as shelling pears: just mix the resin with the hardener in the proportion specified by the manufacturer.

When preparing glue, you need to take into account that it hardens almost instantly, so the surfaces to be glued should be prepared in advance - cleaned of dust and any contaminants.

How to glue a guitar neck with your own hands - step-by-step instructions

Guitar headstock chipping is one of the most common problems. To eliminate it, you will need not only wood glue, but also a clamp - an auxiliary device designed for rigid fixation (tight pressing) of the parts to be glued to each other.

The gluing process itself is quite simple, but requires care.

The sequence of actions is as follows:

We remove the strings and mechanics (pegs) from the guitar;
Degrease and dry the surface;
Prepare the adhesive and apply it evenly to the fracture site;
We connect the surfaces to be glued together as smoothly as possible;
We tighten it with a clamp (you may need two of them);
Wipe off excess glue;
Leave for several hours (in accordance with the instructions for the glue).

To do this you need to drill in the neck blind hole of a suitable diameter and insert a dowel coated with glue into it.

How to glue cracks on a guitar body

Cracks on the soundboard of a guitar are caused by drying out of the wood. They not only spoil appearance guitars, but also disrupt the sound of the instrument, so this defect needs to be eliminated.

The simplest and quick way The solution to the problem is to seal the crevice with cyanoacrylate glue (ordinary superglue).

If the crack is wide, you must first rub wood dust into it, then add superglue. A narrow crack can be glued immediately by simply pouring glue on top.

So that the guitar pleases with its impeccable sound long years, it must be handled with care and observed the following recommendations:

The guitar must be carried and stored in a hard case (case);
If the room where the instrument is stored has low humidity (less than 40%), it is necessary to use a humidifier. You can buy it at a musical instrument store or make it yourself from an ordinary sponge;
Wooden musical instruments are very sensitive to temperature changes. A guitar brought in from the cold should be allowed to warm up until room temperature before the game;
When putting your guitar away for long-term storage, you need to loosen the strings.

This is a traditional guitar glue.

To make guitars, you will need to find the highest quality one. Moreover, it is important that it is stored correctly and does not lose its properties and is not contaminated with all kinds of organisms. Bone glue is less durable and for making guitars it is better to find bone glue. Fish glue is the most durable.

Cooking rules. Soak for several hours, only covering the glue with water. Once it swells, it needs to be heated in a water bath, that is, the container with glue needs to be placed in a container with water and this water must be heated. For example, a children's saucepan with a hole in the lid into which a cup with glue and a lid is inserted is very suitable. You need to heat until the contents turn into a homogeneous mass, easily spreadable, approximately the consistency of liquid kefir. Cooling quickly, the glue gelatinizes, so you need to work without much hesitation. The room should be warm. After cooling, the unused mass loses part of its adhesive ability. So soak it thoroughly. Unmelted glue can be stored in the refrigerator for some time. Dry glue is also best stored in a cool, dry place.

Ready-made wood glues

Flaws. I find it difficult to answer. It’s just that it’s not so easy to buy it, so when it runs out, it becomes very unpleasant in your soul.

Epoxy adhesive

Preparation

has high fluidity

Super glue

it is very toxic

Mikola Rudenko

Guitar adhesives

What kind of glue to use to glue a guitar is a question that will definitely arise in front of you if you just touch upon the repair of guitars, not to mention the manufacturing. Today you can buy a huge number of different glues, but not all of them are suitable for guitars. Let's discuss what adhesives can be used when making guitars.

Guitar adhesives can be divided into those that can be used to glue the entire guitar and those that are used to perform only certain operations when some special qualities are required.

Wood glue, or rather flesh, bone or fish glue

Advantages. When glued correctly, it is very strong. Quite fluid until it cools down. It dries into a hard structure and is considered to be best suited for musical instruments, as it transmits vibrations without unnecessary loss.
Flaws. Very fragile - easily chips on impact. But you can add PVA-like glue to it, which slightly plasticizes it. There are other additives too. It gives a lot of shrinkage, i.e. it requires a very precise fit of the surfaces to be glued, but it’s impossible to do otherwise in guitars. It reacts strongly to humidity conditions, as does the whole guitar.

Ready-made wood glues

Not all ready-made wood glues are suitable for making guitars. You could even say that almost all ready-made PVA and PVA-like wood glues are not particularly suitable for making guitars. Only the rare ones. The reason for this is precisely the plasticity of the gluing. In general, they are prepared for carpentry, and not for transmitting vibrations in the guitar. Therefore, you need to look for ready-made wood glue, which, when dried, gives a solid structure.

How to check. You need to dry it a little and pick it out with a chisel, there should be no rubber. It should either prick or be difficult to cut.

This red glue can rightfully be called the number one guitar glue.

Cooking rules. I squeezed it out, smeared it, pressed it down. (It happens that it is too thick and needs to be diluted with water.)
Advantages. Can't count it enough. He has all the virtues. They can glue everything.
Flaws.
How to make a guitar. 17 steps to make your own acoustic guitar at home

I find it difficult to answer. It’s just that it’s not so easy to buy it, so when it’s finished, it becomes very unpleasant in my soul.

Epoxy adhesive

For some reason, this glue causes an “allergic” reaction in many people, saying that they should never make guitars anywhere. I don't want to argue with this. It is important to understand that everything cannot be used if it is used incorrectly. There is no point in epoxying the entire guitar. So the question is not even worth it, but there are some works where epoxy resin is completely justified and irreplaceable, due to its main property.

Epoxy glue or epoxy resin is a glue that does not shrink when it hardens - no matter how much you spread it, apply it, so much will remain after hardening.

Therefore, in repairs, when it is impossible to adjust the surfaces to be glued, resin has no analogues.

Superpower number two - epoxy glue has high fluidity. It’s good when it flows where it should and bad when it flows further where it shouldn’t.

Super glue

The main property of superglue is not its hardening speed, but its superfluidity.

Sealing mini-cracks into which you can’t put regular glue – this is an area where superglue is unique.

It's not because of a good life that sticks tape on guitars.

Here the entire structure was supported on it. Well, on the lid, of course :)

After making sure that the broken pieces of wood do not need to be inserted back separately, I glue them together. For small things that are inconvenient to tighten with clamps, mesh or superglue are excellent. I was too lazy to bother with the flesh. Thick cyanoacrylate with an activator allows you to obtain an exceptionally strong connection in a couple of minutes, but requires very precise positioning of the parts in the first seconds of gluing.

For the next gluing I used epoxy, tinted to a thick black color. The reason is that the paintwork around the perimeter of the gluing has crumbled, and its thickness is enormous. In addition to gluing the pieces of wood, the resin will prime chips. In addition, it is insensitive to seam thickness, which in this case valuable, because it’s not really possible to pull the parts together.

Epoxy is painted either with printer toner, or with carbon black, or with a specialized liquid dye. Soot is finer than toner, and also slightly thickens the resin (while liquid dyes, on the contrary, thin it out). So I used it.

By the way, I bought the plant all the way in Holland, not finding it in our stores for artists. Later kuchiravenko said that it is easy to buy in stores for icon painters - it turns out that there are such.

First, all seams are coated with epoxy and the parts are secured with a light clamp.

Then I fill the notorious chips. True, you need to be prepared for the fact that later on the sanded surface of the epoxy there will be tiny nicks - tiny bubbles frozen in the resin. It is very difficult to get rid of them, the only thing that comes to mind is vacuum chamber(which I don't have). Bubbles on the surface of the fill can be easily removed by spraying alcohol, but after sanding even half a millimeter deep, new ones will still appear. On the other hand, these bubbles are not particularly noticeable even without additional primer, and any primer over epoxy will easily hide them.

Since the chips on the guitar are located with different sides, epoxy constantly spreads. One solution is to heat small portions of the resin on a burner and immediately, in the next few seconds, apply it to the desired area. The heated resin hardens in literally half a minute and no longer moves.

The next day I take a large file and start removing the excess epoxy.

Large drops can be corrected with a saw.

Small cracks and chips where the resin has not reached are easiest to fill with flowing superglue.

With fine grinding (about P400), transitions between the layers of the original paintwork become noticeable. It is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid them, if only because the glued pieces are slightly diverging, and there is no escape from this. The glue line is clearly visible in the photo.

On the front edge I work as carefully as possible to minimize damage to the paintwork. There are minimal surface joints here, there is something to save.

The last stage before polishing is wet ultrafine.

I polish from all sides:

An unexpected problem arose: on the scratched and battered case, the repaired area began to shine too much. I had to age the surface a little. Large scratches are made with keys, small ones - with a hard brush, which is poked into the guitar, like a pencil, in different places. Both methods provide fairly chaotic scratches.

There are little things left - to touch up the damaged part of the tone block with graphite varnish:

Assemble the electronics, replace the cover and call the owner of the bass.

From the front, the repairs are almost invisible.

But on the side there are spots of native soil, and white dots - these are the same bubbles. We didn’t bother with this area, because no one is interested in repainting an old Taiwanese Yamaha, and without a complete repaint, nothing good would have happened.

The bass went to Tashkent and plays like new.

January 4th, 2018 , 03:16 pm

It was necessary to install a hidden dunlop straplock on the huge superjumbo acoustics. I brought the felt gasket with a punch to required diameter. This became the easiest stage of the whole undertaking.

But then it turned out that the thickness of the bottom dumpling on the Gibson was, God forbid, a centimeter and a half. The centimeter is eaten up by the strap itself, and there is almost no wood left for the screw. So I made this cork from light mahogany:

Now you need to glue it with inside, so that the central hole coincides with the hole in the straplock. The Gibson is gigantic, but it has a sound hole like everyone else. Therefore, my hand inside reaches this far. I can't even touch the wood, let alone press it.

So I came up with this thing:

The awl is conical, so it holds the piece of wood tightly and transfers pressure perfectly. There's also a drop of superglue there, just in case. I screwed a small screw into the handle so that you could feel by touch how far the piece of wood was turned. And you need a drill so as not to suffer and immediately get into the oncoming hole.

I smeared it with tightbond, pressed it into the ring, pulled out the drill, screwed in the screw, tightened it a little and the awl fell out on its own. And the piece of wood remained in in the right place.

For greater reliability, you could install a couple of small nails in the piece of wood with their points up, so that they would rest against the dumpling and prevent it from turning. But in this case this was not required; the tightbond is quite sticky on its own.

May 22nd, 2017 , 06:42 pm

First, for some reason, the guitarist sawed off the end of the neck. It seems that it was because the sensor frame did not fit, I don’t remember exactly. Then, when the berserker frenzy had dissipated, the guitar was given to the master, who glued a piece of wood to the affected area. Apparently, it was not entirely successful, because after that the neck was already in my possession. The task is still the same: to make sure it doesn’t catch the eye.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with such things. But if it’s necessary, it will happen.

I carefully take out the fret - it will come in handy later. I install a suitable radius block on the neck and remove the wood along its end with a file (more precisely, a razor file):

The goal is to get a plane across the entire width of the neck, but not to lower the side ribs. Otherwise, after the repair there will be another glue seam.

It was difficult to find a piece of wood for a patch. The fretboard here is a specific solid rosewood, quite rare on Asian guitars and practically never found on others. Miraculously, I found a record of something similar, which has been lying around in the far corner for about five years, waiting for it to be found. I sawed off a piece and glued it onto thick superglue with my hands so as not to bother with the clamps. At the same time, a 0.6 mm feeler gauge lay in the fret groove, representing the fret foot.

The shades of old and new wood are different because the new one is dry and clean, and the old one is rubbed with fingers.

I removed most of the unnecessary material on the grinder:

A fraction of a millimeter remains to the desired level:

The remainder is scraped and sanded with a piece of sandpaper on a hard block. It is very important not to fill up the edges - the thickness of the patch tends to zero there.

I clean the groove, hammer the old fret back:

I spill the superglue on the side of the fret and immediately press it with a radius block. This ensures that new way will not be higher than the others (lower is possible. Exact matching of heights in this case is not required: the fret is the last). Before applying superglue, I spread a little wax on the wood so that the glue does not soak into it.

After the glue has dried, I remove any excess from the wood and apply oil and wax to the entire pad. Ready:

There are no visible seams on the sides, except those that were there before me.

I would also like to remove the side marks, but this is much more difficult and expensive, and the customer did not ask for this.

It would be interesting to try to convert one inlay into another using the same technique. Contact us.

January 30th, 2017 , 04:33 pm

Repairs are not always carried out on a large scale. I also like to repair guitars simply and inexpensively. If only it worked. This is especially true for cheap instruments: repairing such instruments using standard methods can be more expensive than the guitar itself.

Here, for example, is Epiphon's forest floor. His double-sided anchor was torn off, and his head was glued together askew with a “moment.” Despite this frightening set of misfortunes, I volunteered to fix it on the cheap.

Let's start with the "moment" glue. Nowadays this is a whole family of adhesives, but here the classic rubber one, popular among hedonists, was used. The gluing turned out lousy, the head fell apart back almost without my participation.

Accordingly, everything there is in snot, and there is no point in thinking about a new gluing on top of this disgrace.

The fight against the “moment” consists of two stages. First, the glue is thoroughly soaked with acetone ( as long as it doesn't harm the finish of the guitar; It doesn’t dissolve here, so it’s not scary).

Then the softened, but still sticky glue is slowly scraped off with a pick, toothpick or something similar.

This is a relatively long and boring task. You can invite guests into the workshop to tell stories while the process is underway.

When everything is finally finished, you can go over the pieces of wood with acetone a couple more times and glue the head back together. This has already been described many times, I will not repeat it. Tightbond, a couple of clamps and that's it.

It's even more fun with an anchor. I didn't even think about removing the cover. Instead, I slightly extended the channel under the anchor nut, glued the key into the torn slot and behind it.

I found a similar rod and pushed it back.

The last task is to clean up after gluing the head together. First of all, mask the places on the face where the black varnish has crumbled, revealing light wood. Here epoxy resin with black toner as a dye comes to the rescue. The edge of the elongated anchor channel is also visible in the photo.

View after grinding and polishing. Resin does not polish as well as varnish, but this is only noticeable in reflected light.

Despite this minor flaw, the guitar plays again. And the restoration cost pennies, because I didn’t do anything fancy.

September 30th, 2016 , 01:21 am

I don’t understand at all why this issue causes so much controversy in the craft community.

Usually, one of three types of glue is recommended for gluing frets: either epoxy, cyanoacrylate, or PVA (and the like, including carpentry Titebond). Let's look at their pros and cons.

Epoxy:
+ Huge work time;
+ Decent adhesion to wood and metal;
+ High strength;
+ Low ductility - transmits vibrations well;

+ No shrinkage;
+ Possibility of tinting the glue in desired color, which is useful when filling the edges of fret grooves, etc.;

Hassle with preparing the mixture;
- From the enormous working time follows a monstrous time for complete curing - i.e. You will definitely have to leave the neck to dry overnight;
- You need protection from glue leakage onto the pad - either wax, or electrical tape, or anything else you can think of. Either cycle for a long time and painfully;
- A stray drop of glue after hardening can only be removed mechanically;
- poor adhesion to oily wood;
- with a lack of plasticizer - excessive fragility.

Cyanoacrylate:
+ Excellent adhesion to wood and metal;
+ High strength;
+ The most fluid cyanoacrylates allow you to glue frets after their installation. This opens up a lot of possibilities and, in general, makes life much easier;
+ Ideal ductility - slightly higher than typical epoxy. The glue is very hard, but does not tend to crumble or chip;
+ Possibility of using activators for ultra-fast curing;
+ Excellent gap filling;
+ Almost complete absence of shrinkage;
+ The solid residue can be dissolved with acetone;
+ The glue is transparent (or black, if you are lucky enough to find one).

A little expensive;
- Requires protection against glue leakage onto the lining;
- Eats nitro varnish (and other one-component coatings);
- In the liquid version, it requires great care;
- Due to high adhesion, it is relatively difficult to remove excess from the pad;
- It stinks.

PVA and Titebond:
+ Cheap;
+ Absolutely non-toxic;
+ Washable with water (Titebond Original);
+ Does not stick to varnish and plastic, so stray drops do not harm the guitar and are easily removed;

- Lack of adhesion to metal;
- Strong shrinkage, poor filling of gaps;
- There is a lot of water in the glue. Penetrating into the grooves of the frets, this water can be actively absorbed into the wood and bend the neck back, after which it takes a long time to dry. I'm not saying that this ALWAYS happens, but it is a possibility. Especially when the frets are glued for the first time, and the pores of the wood are not yet closed. Please note that the wood of the fingerboard enters the fret grooves with the end grain, and moisture is absorbed into the ends much more readily than into the sides. In any case, the drying time is like epoxy, and the working time is short, like super;
- Plasticity varies, on average higher than cyanoacrylate;
- Dried glue is cloudy white or yellow.

From this list it clearly follows that PVA and Titebond are not suitable for gluing in frets.

Some craftsmen believe that only PVA should be used. You might even be able to meet someone who believes sound of frets glued to tightbond, superior to that of frets mounted on superglue. But let's be serious:

Why glue metal strips to wood with glue that doesn't stick to metal?

If anyone has a clear answer to this question, please leave a comment, they are open to anonymity.

They often write: tightbond clings to the frets normally, don’t worry, drop it and check.
But we can come to the conclusion that the tightbond also clings perfectly to the plastic cap on its own tube. Undoubtedly, the glue will remain on the surface of the fret: where should it go? But the presence of glue on the surface is not the same as good adhesion. Remember, for example, how good soldering differs from bad soldering: a drop of solder may lie on the contact, but this is not enough - the solder must grapple with the surface. It's the same with glue.

Tightbond is an adhesive for porous materials: wood, paper, fabric. Just according to the specifications. Even if a film of glue fills the gap between the fret stem and the wood, it can detach from the metal at any time - at least during the process of bending the neck back and forth when changing strings. And in any case, filling gaps is not best side Tightbond, shrinkage is too large.

Summary: Leave wood glues for carpentry, they work great there. And there is no need to pour them under the frets.

(and I haven’t gone through the rest of the cons yet)

The question is "superglue or epoxy?" should be decided on a guitar-by-guitar basis. Sometimes epoxy is the only comfortable way to fit frets into grooves that are too wide. The general algorithm of my actions is as follows: prepare the frets, make sure that they fit into the grooves without excessive effort (if somewhere it doesn’t fit well, you can reduce the thickness of the fret stem). Carefully coat the trim with wax paste, making sure that it does not get into the grooves. Pour epoxy into the grooves. Press the frets into place (you can help with a press). Press the frets with radius blocks. Go home.

In the morning, this beauty will appear on the lining:

But removing it is a piece of cake, because the epoxy just lies on the surface, but does not stick (that is why it collected in large drops). You can scrape it off with a scraper or a mediator.

(I would warn those who want to glue frets using the described method against using branded “double syringes”: even half-hour compounds after ten to fifteen minutes sometimes become noticeably more viscous than you expect from them. Very worrying. In addition, these syringes cost terrible money. Better buy epoxy and hardener in cans, you get a cheap mixture with a long working time in exchange for a little more complex preparation)

But, to tell the truth, I’ve been obsessed with superglue for about three years now.

Cyanoacrylate is fast. My record for changing frets on a removable unframed neck is two hours. With planing of the lining, restoration of paintwork on the sidewalls, etc. And I can be sure that the glue is stable within five minutes after gluing. Again, taping the frets after installation opens up some absolutely fantastic possibilities. You hammer or press the frets into the neck and see how it goes. If there are no springy areas anywhere and the frets fit tightly, you can apply glue to them without pressing. If at least a couple of frets are springy, okay, put them under a press (or a radius block) and glue them. You can glue individual frets: even holding the press with your hands for ten seconds until the glue under the activator sets is not at all tiring.

And don’t think that the quality drops in any way compared to epoxy. On the contrary, according to my observations, super sticks much better to untreated surfaces. The frets are quite smooth :) Sanding them or even just degreasing them is unnecessary fuss. You don't need it with superglue, everything will stick just fine.

At the same time, the adhesive mass is amazingly ground, polished into a mirror, merging with the varnish; It is transparent and free of bubbles. Well, that is, in fact, this is an ideal. The same compound can be used to glue the frets and restore order - at least overlays, at least. The curing speed is controlled by the activator; you can fill even huge holes if you get used to it.

Cons - yes, there are. For example, uncured glue smells terrible. The solution is with filters for organic vapors, it works great. Well, open the window wider.

People often write and say that superglue makes it difficult to remove frets. This does not correspond to reality. When heated, the super falls apart, so it works as expected. Actually, I quite regularly remove both my own and the factory frets - and only by the smell can I smell that they were glued to cyanoacrylate. I don’t see any specific difficulties.

All of the above has been confirmed by many years of practice. If I'm missing something, please write to me.

September 20th, 2016 , 01:06 am

There was a huge gap under the dreadnought's bridge. I drove a spatula into it, and this is what happened:

Yes, that's right. There really was no varnish removed (or at least sanded!) under the stand. The adhesion of the glue to the varnish is zero, not a trace remains. The stand was held on by two dowels. And the guitar is called "Fender", not a fake.

Made in China, of course. Classic example the shame that invariably accompanies the desire to earn extra money from a promoted logo. This is how the Chinese know how to do great work - but not for free. And in the free mode, at the factory they simply coat the stand with superglue and sculpt it without understanding it. Probably, the lousy adhesion of cyanoacrylate to this brand of varnish was discovered after a couple of cars of guitars had been produced. Alas, the Chinese dreadnought is not a Toyota; no one will recall it back to the factory.

(by the way, the use of superglue for gluing a stand in itself is by no means bad manners; due to its properties, it is ideal if the varnish on the deck is polymer and is not afraid of acetone. It is used, for example, on Larrivee)

However, something must be done. And it is clear that you should start by removing the varnish where fresh glue will later lie. The question is, how to locally remove a millimeter layer of varnish that is as hard as glass?

First, the stand is fixed in the right place (at least with double-sided tape), then you need to walk around the perimeter with a sharp stationery knife- this will cut the varnish (like a glass cutter) and thereby prevent it from chipping during further work. That is, inside the perimeter, let it prick, of course. It is important to us that cracks and chips do not go outside. For clarity and convenience of work, it is better to first cover the deck with paper tape and cut directly along it.

In. On the right edge I had already picked at it with a chisel and realized that it was very difficult to separate the varnish from the wood. On the Internet they often advise using cycles (Mottola, for example), but I either don’t have the time or the patience. The varnish is brutally thick and durable. Therefore, I move on to plan b.

This is my favorite drill (Proxxon 50/EF) with a proprietary milling base. The base is excellent, much better than the Dremel plastic ebalaika. I have been using this combination as a micro router for several months now. The three-jaw chuck may hit slightly, and you want to spin the cutter faster than the maximum 20 thousand revolutions - but it’s still fantastically convenient and cool. Especially for small tasks such as removing varnish peel. And most importantly, such a router weighs practically nothing and, if something happens, it does not tear out of your hands, but simply shuts up due to lack of power :) This allows them to work more boldly than with large devices.

Having removed everything that is not scary with a router, I finish off the edges with a chisel - now it’s as easy as shelling pears:

Well, I trim little things, of course.

Almost all:

All that remains is to catch the fleas a little and you can glue the stand (the main thing is not to forget to clean it off old glue). There is absolutely nothing interesting in the gluing itself. In this case, I glued it onto tightbond; the excess is easy to wash off from the varnish with water. You could use thick superglue, removing the residue with acetone. A matter of taste. And no one has canceled epoxy. In general, the difficult stage is over, then everything comes down to clamps.

March 26th, 2016 , 02:06 pm

A very unpleasant breakdown! The nest broke out a good piece of wood right at the sunburst transition where the color is hardest to hit.

Epiphone, of course, is great. The socket is placed in the side of the case. And on the epiphone it was moved to the tone block, modeled on the SG. The problem is that the thickness of the Thunderbird's case is small, so we had to recess the socket very deeply so that the jack would not rest against the cover of the tone unit. As a result, the thickness of the wood at the point where the nest is attached is one and a half millimeters. Plus varnish. I think this is sabotage.

Here, by the way, is the cover for the tone control unit. The hole in the foil between the holes for the screws was poked with the tip of the jack. And this is with an extremely low socket setting.

I clean the wood from graphite from the inside and make a patch from thick veneer:

Now this plate needs to be glued. First I plug the hole from the bottom:

I prepare black epoxy, pour it into the affected area, press the plate on top and fill it with epoxy again:

After this, the guitar is held in a horizontal position for a long time so that the resin hardens on a flat surface. It’s not harmful to check for the first twenty minutes to see if there is any drawdown, and if necessary, add a drop or two. Epoxy absorbs into the wood, albeit slowly.

The next day I drill a new hole. First, a tiny hole is drilled from the top (this makes it easier to mark the position):

Then from the back side, the desired size. On the other hand, something hard must be pressed down so that the drill does not break out the material along the edges of the hole.

Now you can attach a decorative sticker.

No need to be surprised. Why put the nest back in such a bad place?.. No, let it be on the side, as it should be. From there it is at least difficult to break it out. And in the vacant space we decided to install a Gibson switch. It was possible to use a potentiometer (to get two volumes and two timbres), but the switch seemed more useful to the customer. Both would cover the dark patch.

I'm installing new elements:

And I solder them into the diagram:

Notice how smooth the pouring surface looks. I didn't sand it or do anything at all, just painted it with graphite on top. Comfortable.

From the switch, in fact, great benefit: The transition from sensor to sensor is much faster than with just two volumes. On the other hand, there is not much bass with such a switch. Good examples- Mockingbird and Richenbacker. On modern basses, the task of quickly selecting a sensor is solved by the balance knob.

General form:

The switch moves in a horizontal plane so as not to interfere with turning the handles.

January 10th, 2016 , 06:43 pm

[5 ] [...]

In the fall, I went to Muzdetal to buy strings and casually told Shishkin that I was about to start making my first instrument. My ideas about the process at that time were extremely vague, but that didn’t stop me from bragging. I told everything: what a wonderful customer I have, and how interesting the project looks, and what wonderful firewood I bought for it, and how bravely I will ride a CNC milling machine - in short, about all my hopes and dreams.

“You’ll screw it up,” was all Shishkin answered.

This was said without any malice. Sasha just reminded me of the rules of the game. In the process of making a musical instrument, there are a lot of unobvious things - evidence of which can be found in craftsman guitars that shamefully sell out on eBay or on the music forum for the price of their pickups and accessories. The stories behind them are about the same: like, a man made a guitar, and in the end he milled a groove for a Floyd two millimeters away from the desired position. Collected - brrrr. And that’s it, the stuffing doesn’t turn back.

But I’m smart, I’m cool, I can do anything.

It all starts with cutting the prepared boards. View from the log:

I pressed the halves together and planed them. In the process, it became clear that I had learned a lot since then - the procedure did not require any effort, five to ten minutes and you can glue it.

I estimated the position of the body on the workpiece and traced it according to the template:

And here is the template itself, milled by robots from ten-millimeter PVC:

In general, the rigidity of this material turned out to be rather weak for such figures. The side ears move a lot under pressure. MDF would be better. And they also say that you can cut plywood with a laser, and there will be no protruding chips (I haven’t checked it yet). I simply stuck double-sided tape over the entire area of the template and thus solved the problem.

Two holes are needed so that the template can be more or less accurately transferred to the other side of the workpiece. Then the screws for securing the neck will go through them.

On the other side, you need to do this: mark the position of the cutout for the ribs.

The boundaries of this cutout are transferred back to the front side according to the marks on the template. All this is necessary in order to reduce the depth of the internal cavity opposite the cutout. Has anyone forgotten that the bass will have cavities?

I made them like this. First, without noise and dust, I drilled out most of the wood on the machine:

Then I took out a powerful router and cleaned the edges and bottom of each groove.

The outer PVC sheet is lined so as not to drive the router along the thin side of the template.

It turns out like this:

You can glue the top.

As I already wrote, I didn’t immediately find a maple board suitable for the top. I had to order ready-made planks from rare-shop.ru. They arrived already planed right size, so all I have to do is trim the edges before gluing.

The thickness of the planks was about 10 mm, so it is impossible to glue them together in the same way as the halves of the body (just with clamps). I used the method that acoustic craftsmen use to assemble soundboards, and I was right.

It looks something like this:

Unlike the author of the article linked above, I did without pegs. I simply positioned the side pieces of plywood so that the top was pressed against the base with a slight tension. And then I smeared it with tightbond, installed the two halves with a house and pressed them along the edges with two clamps. And I put all the cans from under the workbench on the center :)

The remaining adhesive is removed by scraping.

That's it, it's time to put the top on the body.

It seems like a simple matter. Clamps are placed along the edges of the body - whatever is available - and in the center you can either put something heavy, or initially press the top with long rails (a kind of replacement for carpentry clamps). In addition, there is a valuable life hack: in those places where there will later be recesses for the sensors and bridge, you can safely screw in self-tapping screws with press washers (pre-drilled to avoid splitting).

I tried these ideas on one experimental log, and everything went fine. Except that the tightbond was literally being sucked into the tree, and I realized that I needed to pour more of it.

But something bad happened to the colossus carcass.

There was again too little glue. The clamps were pressing in the wrong direction. I forgot to prepare the clamps that go under the clamps, and ran to look for them after applying the glue. The rails bulged in the center. When I finally clamped everything properly and looked at the clock, it became clear that I had screwed up the gluing purely due to time: it took a quarter of an hour, and it would be good to clamp the red tightbond for five minutes, or at most ten.

So I wasn't at all surprised to see a thick seam between the top and body the next day. It’s unlikely that they would have collapsed, but you still can’t give away such work. It is also difficult to separate the top without damage. So I sawed the body crosswise to see what the seam looked like in the thickness of the body, and threw the halves into the Yauza.

So, completely unexpectedly, I fucked everything up out of the blue. Eh, custom shop!

Now I see many ways in which everything could have been glued together without fuss. To hell with them, with the rails - all you have to do is go to the parking lot, take the battery out of the car, and press the top down with it! That's all! From above you can have a second one, from a neighbor’s car, for example. Well, there are clamps around the edges. Is it difficult, or what?..

Overall, although I screwed up, I definitely became smarter. The text is about not empty space appeared :)

Okay, new building.

And the top is new, again from a hair shop, this time with a knot in a visible place.

The wood texture is generally nicer than on the previous top, so I didn't sweat it.

This time the gluing went great. The main components of success: green tightbond (Ultimate) and the fact that all the devices were prepared in advance.

Now look, focus:

Oops! And I have nothing to do with it, these are all robots. I only have drawings.

There is a popular opinion that a CNC router kills the soul, and making guitars with it is joyless. Personally, I don't see an ethical problem in making guitars under my own brand even in its entirety outsource, and leave the development of models, coordination of the process and fine-tuning to yourself. But CNC is a different story: in the case of piece production, it usually only deals with things that are easy to model. For example, rectangular grooves for sensors. That is, the most boring things.

The question arises: is there much art in placing a template on a workpiece and whirring along it with a router for a long time? This kind of work isn't what we tinker with guitars for.. After CNC, all that remains is to make bevels for the elbow and belly, chamfers, various beauties, and that’s all.

As for CNC machining of complex surfaces, IMHO, it’s easier to cut them by hand than to reliably model them. This is if we talk about individual instruments. And the soul does not suffer. In mass production, of course, it makes sense to model the shape once as accurately as possible (the results of which can be seen in various factory tours on YouTube).

I understand and share the thrill of self made with a tree. But milling contours and grooves using templates has never been something that requires special skills. Noisy, dusty, monotonous, tiring work. I pay for CNC machining not because it is profitable in terms of some business, but simply because I prefer to spend my time on more beautiful activities.

The robots helpfully cut me not only the main contours, but also the edge for the edging. And at the same time there is another small step that marks the lower level of the archtop. This is much more visual than a pencil line, and is done with one offset command in “rino”. On the lower horn, let's say, there is just a little bit left to remove.

Shavings. Do you feel your soul blossoming?

There is also a lot of work left on the back of the case (because flipping the case during CNC machining makes the process much more expensive, so I decided that I would do everything myself). Cover groove:

Rounding along the bottom edge:

Then I wanted to remove a little thickness of the body near the heel of the neck, purely for beauty. I bought a half-round cutter and found that it fits perfectly under the copy sleeve.

It doesn’t fit inside the bushing, but it removes it almost like a bearing.

Then with a plow:

And the skin:

The bevel is small. It was not enough to get to the bottom of the cavity.

There is a hole left for the nest. More precisely, two - Vladimir asked to make separate outputs from each sensor, approximately like on a Rickenbacker.

Alder is easy to work with and cuts beautifully.

Where can I get a jackplate for two sockets? Yes, on eBay, but it will take longer than I procrastinate. So to hell with it, my hands are itching now. I found a scrap of two-millimeter aluminum sheet, cut out a rectangle and bent it along the radius of the side of the body.

I forgot to say: I hate things that stick out. Caps, screws, frames - everything feels disgusting with your hands when you feel your favorite guitar. At the same time, the jackplate must be thin, but durable, so that a standard socket will fit in there and not break anything. Putting it through a layer of alder is not an option; it will break on the first day. That is, for everything to be completely cool, you need to do metal plate, but drown it in the body. Okay, so it will be:

I dug into it with a chisel.

(for the sake of beauty, you could use long tubular jacks, like these:

They are placed through 1-2 centimeters of wood and look beautiful. But the reliability of these parts is below par. Long sockets are terribly afraid of lateral loads and cannot be repaired, because their contacts are thin and located inside a metal tube. So I prefer regular jacks)

Four holes in the corners of the plate at equal distances from the edges are made using a square.

The holes are needed not for screws, but for studs, so I cut M3 threads into them.

Where can I get an aluminum rod with a diameter of three millimeters? On VKontakte

Guitar glue - overview of options

How to glue a guitar neck with your own hands - step-by-step instructions

How to glue cracks on a guitar body

Guitar adhesives

How to make a guitar. 17 steps to make your own acoustic guitar at home