Oh Cajun spice, sweats and blushers your mind.
By the time I got out to the shed this Monday evening, it was already late. I didn't have enough time to level out the neck block pocket, so I left that for another evening this week, and used Monday evening to take care of a few minor repairs.
Sometime before or after the neck heel of This Old Guitar was damaged by a previous owner, her pickup and preamp were removed, and her busted neck and body were used as wall hangings at a musical instrument store repair desk. Although I'm all for displaying non-working musical instruments for art's sake, there was an extra hole in the rear of the bowl that needed to be repaired. Celluloid binding strip, as well as the plastic Jay Turser used to make their bowls, can be melted down easily with pure acetone.
I masked off the area to help contain the reaction at the outside of the bowl, and poured some acetone into the bottle cap.
The OSHA guideline for acetone describes its appearance and odor as a colorless liquid with a fragrant, mintlike odor. It's the main ingredient in nail polish remover, and full-strength acetone doesn't smell at all like incense or peppermint to me. The effect of inhaling too much acetone can be a light-headed "psychedelic experience" at best, and a "bad trip" at worst, including nauesea and depressed respiration. If you've ever spent a long time in a beauty parlor or nail salon with poor ventilation, some of these symptoms might sound familiar.
The exhaust fan in the This Old Guitar workshop is on the weak side, so I was careful to work up wind of the acetone and worked quickly. A couple of narrow pieces of black binding sandwiched together filled the hole, to be trimmed down from the outside with a knife and sand paper.
The hole was through the label on the inside of the bowl. This side of the repair to the bowl will also get trimmed, but I'll leave the label as-is and let the repair be purely functional.
Sometime before or after the neck heel of This Old Guitar was damaged by a previous owner, her pickup and preamp were removed, and her busted neck and body were used as wall hangings at a musical instrument store repair desk. Although I'm all for displaying non-working musical instruments for art's sake, there was an extra hole in the rear of the bowl that needed to be repaired. Celluloid binding strip, as well as the plastic Jay Turser used to make their bowls, can be melted down easily with pure acetone.
I masked off the area to help contain the reaction at the outside of the bowl, and poured some acetone into the bottle cap.
The OSHA guideline for acetone describes its appearance and odor as a colorless liquid with a fragrant, mintlike odor. It's the main ingredient in nail polish remover, and full-strength acetone doesn't smell at all like incense or peppermint to me. The effect of inhaling too much acetone can be a light-headed "psychedelic experience" at best, and a "bad trip" at worst, including nauesea and depressed respiration. If you've ever spent a long time in a beauty parlor or nail salon with poor ventilation, some of these symptoms might sound familiar.
The exhaust fan in the This Old Guitar workshop is on the weak side, so I was careful to work up wind of the acetone and worked quickly. A couple of narrow pieces of black binding sandwiched together filled the hole, to be trimmed down from the outside with a knife and sand paper.
The hole was through the label on the inside of the bowl. This side of the repair to the bowl will also get trimmed, but I'll leave the label as-is and let the repair be purely functional.
Despite my efforts to be careful, I made a few new dents and deep scratches in the neck while working on the heel repairs. I used a hobby knife to widen and deepen these damages slightly past the finish, so that I could fill them in with some very small slices of scrap mahogany. After pushing some carpenters glue into the damaged areas with a finger, I used a hobby-grade metal probe and the side of the hobby knife to push in and compress the mahogany splinters.
Strips of painters tape around the neck acted as clamps until the glue dried.
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