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. . . well, destroy it a little more anyhow.
So little background on what happened. I had the strings off my acoustic and was adjusting the truss rod with a big allen key. My wife called me for something or other upstairs, I left the guitar on the couch (with the allen key still in the guitar). From upstairs I heard a huge crash a few minutes later and went down to check what was going on. My acoustic was on the floor face down and my son was crying. I was like OK . . . hopefully no biggie. I lifted it up, and everything looked OK. Then I saw the allen key on the floor . . . with a bit of metal still stuck on to it. The bit of metal was the truss rod adjustment screw, with a chunk of the rod itself broken off inside it. Which seemed like an insurmountable problem - I called up a couple places, but they said they wouldn't try to replace a truss rod in an acoustic for under 600$. And that even for that they couldn't guarantee anything. Given that I bought the guitar 20 years ago for 250$ it just didn't seem worth it.
So after some time spent yelling, pouting, and then accepting what had happened . . . and a trip to the music store looking for a replacement guitar . . . I was about to throw out my beloved acoustic yesterday. I was standing in front of the garbage can sadly staring at my guitar when I decided - what the ****. Nothing to lose now. How hard can it be to DIY a truss rod replacement?
So, I grabbed some box cutters, a paint scraper, and the iron. And a couple beers.
I knew that the truss rod had to be under the fretboard, so I'd have to take the fretboard off to get to it. So, the first thing I did was knock the nut off with a bit of scrap wood and a quick tap of a hammer. So far so good, came off easily. Then I chugged a beer to steady myself. Next was carefully scoring all the way around the fretboard where the binding meets the guitar with an exacto blade (to break the finish - which went up over the binding). Then I had to loosen the glue that holds the board onto the neck and body.
I stuck the iron on the fretboard for a while until it got extremely hot. I carefully took the sharp/thin paint scraper and started prying the fretboard off the neck. It was slow going. I'd heat up the board, pry a bit, heat up the board, pry it a bit . . . I was close to giving up after the first 15 minutes because it didn't seem like it would ever work. It was very tough/slow going where the neck meets the body because I didn't want to scratch the spruce top. But after a couple hours (and more beers - followed by some terrible vodka coolers because we ran out of beer) the whole thing came off quite nicely!
There's actually very little tear out from the wood beneath, the frets and binding are still in good shape:
Measured the old one, and ordered an exact replacement truss rod from stew-mac for 20$ (apparently it's the Martin style truss rod, but the longer 'electric guitar' version). Since it'll take a couple days to come in, I was worried that the fretboard might warp being off the guitar, since it's summer and kinda humid so clamped it to a level I had lying around:
Yes, I'm sure that I've ****ed something up . . . and it's still going to be an uphill battle to get this back together properly but I've gone from 'NO HOPE' to 'Holy ****, you may pull this off you bungling idiot'.
I figure that popping the new rod back into place and gluing the board back on will be pretty straight forward. Not sure exactly how best to fix the area between the binding and neck. I guess wood filler, sand the finish off the neck, and refinish the whole thing? Open to comments from anyone who actually knows what the **** they're doing to tell me how I've ruined everything or maybe point me in the right direction.
So little background on what happened. I had the strings off my acoustic and was adjusting the truss rod with a big allen key. My wife called me for something or other upstairs, I left the guitar on the couch (with the allen key still in the guitar). From upstairs I heard a huge crash a few minutes later and went down to check what was going on. My acoustic was on the floor face down and my son was crying. I was like OK . . . hopefully no biggie. I lifted it up, and everything looked OK. Then I saw the allen key on the floor . . . with a bit of metal still stuck on to it. The bit of metal was the truss rod adjustment screw, with a chunk of the rod itself broken off inside it. Which seemed like an insurmountable problem - I called up a couple places, but they said they wouldn't try to replace a truss rod in an acoustic for under 600$. And that even for that they couldn't guarantee anything. Given that I bought the guitar 20 years ago for 250$ it just didn't seem worth it.
So after some time spent yelling, pouting, and then accepting what had happened . . . and a trip to the music store looking for a replacement guitar . . . I was about to throw out my beloved acoustic yesterday. I was standing in front of the garbage can sadly staring at my guitar when I decided - what the ****. Nothing to lose now. How hard can it be to DIY a truss rod replacement?
So, I grabbed some box cutters, a paint scraper, and the iron. And a couple beers.
I knew that the truss rod had to be under the fretboard, so I'd have to take the fretboard off to get to it. So, the first thing I did was knock the nut off with a bit of scrap wood and a quick tap of a hammer. So far so good, came off easily. Then I chugged a beer to steady myself. Next was carefully scoring all the way around the fretboard where the binding meets the guitar with an exacto blade (to break the finish - which went up over the binding). Then I had to loosen the glue that holds the board onto the neck and body.
I stuck the iron on the fretboard for a while until it got extremely hot. I carefully took the sharp/thin paint scraper and started prying the fretboard off the neck. It was slow going. I'd heat up the board, pry a bit, heat up the board, pry it a bit . . . I was close to giving up after the first 15 minutes because it didn't seem like it would ever work. It was very tough/slow going where the neck meets the body because I didn't want to scratch the spruce top. But after a couple hours (and more beers - followed by some terrible vodka coolers because we ran out of beer) the whole thing came off quite nicely!
There's actually very little tear out from the wood beneath, the frets and binding are still in good shape:
Measured the old one, and ordered an exact replacement truss rod from stew-mac for 20$ (apparently it's the Martin style truss rod, but the longer 'electric guitar' version). Since it'll take a couple days to come in, I was worried that the fretboard might warp being off the guitar, since it's summer and kinda humid so clamped it to a level I had lying around:
Yes, I'm sure that I've ****ed something up . . . and it's still going to be an uphill battle to get this back together properly but I've gone from 'NO HOPE' to 'Holy ****, you may pull this off you bungling idiot'.
I figure that popping the new rod back into place and gluing the board back on will be pretty straight forward. Not sure exactly how best to fix the area between the binding and neck. I guess wood filler, sand the finish off the neck, and refinish the whole thing? Open to comments from anyone who actually knows what the **** they're doing to tell me how I've ruined everything or maybe point me in the right direction.
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