viola_license_revoked Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 Hello all I'm curious what are your opinions on how to approach this repair please? Ray viola_license_revoked Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoGo Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 That neck heel separation looks like former glue seam - heel extended with additional piece of wood. The top will have to be removed and crack glued properly with some kind of SP patch. Did you check the back around the soundpost for a crack? Much depends on value of the bass and what glue was used originally. If it is cheaper romanian or chinese bass white glue might be in the heel crack which may be problematic for adhesion (though my own experiments didn't confirm that, unless you cannot clamp it well). If it is such case and the neck is still firmly attached to body, I would probably opt for force injecting glue under pressure using syringe with o-ring a'la Burgess Strad article, clamping tightly and I would consider doweling the heel with long strong maple dowels from the fingerboard glueing surface right down almost to the back button like many makers do to new builds of cellos and basses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiddleDoug Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 Are you doing the work yourself? That’s a really long crack! You’ll need lots of clamps to keep that aligned, and close it for gluing. Probably some kind of pillar and clamp system. For a proper sound post patch, you’ll need to do a bunch of fixturing and a partial cast to support the SP patch area. For the neck, a long dowel down through should do it. I’ve never done that for a bass. All in all, you’ve got a big job ahead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacobsaunders Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 Isn't that one picture of a Bass, and two of a cello? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Richwine Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 I don't think you're going to get any kind of glue into that heel crack. Looks a lot like glue-line creep to me, too. Depending on the price level of the bass, you might want to stabilize the crack, if it is a crack, by drilling down through the fingerboard across the crack, reaming with a tapered reamer, then gluing in a tapered dowel long enough to support the crack without adding cross-grain problems, then fill the hole in the fingerboard with a tapered ebony plug. The shop I worked in did that on student instruments, which was about the only place where we ran into those problems. Something you might want to bear in mind before starting on that sound post crack: I looked on my old shop's outdated price list, and they charge over $2000 for a sound post crack on a bass, which is well below the going rate on either coast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barry J. Griffiths Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 I don’t see any glue seam separations near the button. There’s a lighter colored grain of wood right near the button which looks like a separation. I do see a crack right about in the middle of the heel of the neck. The glue/drill/dowel approach seems correct. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Richwine Posted March 16 Report Share Posted March 16 The reason we tapered the hole and dowel was to get a good glue joint. This requires more care in shaping and fitting, but it's really difficult to get a good glue spread with a straight dowel that long. It's a lot easier to get a good glue bond with a few inches of tapered dowel. Fit it, cut it to length, apply glue then push home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viola_license_revoked Posted March 16 Author Report Share Posted March 16 Thank you all so much for all your illuminating suggestions and comments so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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