Bench Report; Bon Jovi Les Paul

[BCR Greg]

Jon has the earliest Classic I have seen, and it fell. So I get to put it back. Here's a few shots of the work....

How it arrived(by courier)...





Broked up bad...





After hours of fiber clearing, coffee drinking and careful refitting...the hot hide glue and clamps come into play....





Not strong enough, time for the routing. By hand. With a Dremel.

[BCR Greg]

How it looks before the splines. The routes go all the way to the face, through the cracked areas.



Rough cut splines of 1950's Honduran mahogany from the Kalamazoo factory...



Shaped and ready to be glued in...



Clamped in with hot hide glue.....



Stay tuned for more fun......

[crunchee]

He didn't try to 'sling' his guitar, did he? Maybe it's on video somewhere.

[DBraz]

Wow, what a great set of progress photo's. Really great stuff. I cannot wait for the next instalment. Do you drop everything else on the bench when a Bon Jovi guitar comes in?

Edit: Bad choice of word drop... I meant postpone.

[gorch]

Fantastic story! Let's go ahead.

[motorpriest]

Amazing stuff! Not the break, of course. Keep us posted!

[BTMN]

Always fun to watch. Thanks.

[hamerhead]

I love these.

[HAMERMAN]

>Not strong enough, time for the routing. By hand. With a Dremel.

You sir are a mad man - and I mean that in the best possible way. :-)

As always amazing work, looking forward to more pics and curious to see how you will handle the missing chip between the splines.

So besides the neck repair it's in for a swirl job - right?......

[tbonesullivan]

OUCH.

I can say though, that the "classic" Les pauls are one of my favorite varieties. I wish they had kept making them. Nice hot raunchy pickups, snot green inlays. YUM.

[Armitage]

Excellent work, as always.

[Boomerang~Junkie]

Refinish and old wooden desk or scratched cabinet door - sure. But I'd be seriously sweating bullets trying to do anything like that. I don't care how many times you've done that sort of repair, you truly must have nerves of steel. I also love these threads - amazing.

[devrock]

Moar piks!!!! Interesting to see how matching the gold paint comes out. Is it difficult to match?

[BCR Greg]

Late night leveling session with my grandfather's favorite chisel.....

[MCChris]

I'm sure whoever knocked that guitar over is swimming with the fishes right now.

[Ting Ho Dung]

I'm sure whoever knocked that guitar over is swimming with the fishes right now.

Do you think Kevin Bacon is involved?

Great thread Greg. Can't wait to see the progress.

[alantig]

Had the distinct pleasure of stopping in at Chez Greg this afternoon on my way to the Frozen Four. Got to see the man's in-progress handiwork up close - just you wait! Greg is a master - I hope I never need a headstock repair, but if I do, I know where it's going.

I thought about offering him $350...but there were too many sharp tools within easy reach!

[BCR Greg]

Fantastic seeing you again after all this time, fella.

Back to the job at hand.....

So the wood between the splines cannot be trusted. The area is thin because of the truss rod nut route, and the damage was extreme there. SO.....

Grandad's rasp is used to carve a hollow where the wood was poop....



Then a piece of 50's Honduran is hand shaped to match the contour of the cut...




Then it's "clamp and wait" time....

[gorch]

Great pics Greg! I thought it were clamped already?!

[tbonesullivan]

He's clamping on another piece of wood to help strengthen the joint. Then it'll be rasped/sanded cut and molded, re-finished, and done.

Like it never even happened. I love seeing greg's work. I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad that hopefully I'll never need this kind of work done to a guitar. I'd love to have it rebuilt like this, but I'd hate to break one like this in the first place.

Bon Jovi must really like the guitar. Something like this could easily be replaced.

[aknapp]

Something like this could easily be replaced.

Sssshhhhhh.....Unka Greg needs da bizness!

[a.bandini]

I've missed seeing these impressive projects, thanks for putting it up.

I'll be interested to see how you remove the excess wood on the back of the neck. Does the order of installing splines vs. reinforcing the weak wood matter in this specific case? (Splines first, then replace wood vs. replace the weak wood and then put splines in? The engineer in me is curious. Thanks. )

I know where to send mine if anything like this ever happens.

[Armitage]

We all know Greg can fix the wood, he's got the skills! I'm waiting to see how he matches that gold/green metallic paint. That seems like it'd be a nightmare.

[BCR Greg]

Well, here's the latest....

Our handy filler plate with the classic clamp mark....



Grandpa's hand struck 1930's rasp makes short work of the mahogany....



After some scraping and sanding.....



After using my Top Secret Uncle Greg's grain filler/rigidity adder/smoothedy poop.....



Now it's time to paint it away.

Everyone having fun?

[Bennyboy-UK]

Spellbinding stuff m8

[velorush]

We all know Greg can fix the wood, he's got the skills! I'm waiting to see how he matches that gold/green metallic paint. That seems like it'd be a nightmare.

That was my first thought when the thread opened. We've all seen Greg fix these breaks (to our collective amazement), it's just that metallics, especially gold are such a difficult match. This will be interesting to watch!