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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 6:01 am
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Yeah Arth, never a problem with the three bolt neck at all. No stability or tuning issues. My neck pocket is pretty tight. It's a great sounding guitar that's why I still have it today as well as the sentimental value. I wore out the original trem and saddles. I was pretty rough on it. I think I was pretty lucky. Three bolt necks have been around a long time. My 63 Supro and 57 Dano U1 have three bolt necks. Fender got pretty sloppy in the mid to late 70's. Mine has a maple neck but doesn't have the gobs of poly on it that the later ones have. Mine's pretty light too. I recently replaced the trem with a Super-Vee Bladerunner. It's really nice and adds some really nice sustain.

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 9:09 am
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arth1 wrote:
Ceri wrote:
Hello Buxom. It works with light dents where the wood fibres are squashed a bit but not broken. The steam created by the method trv1979 outlined is just the right temperature to cause the lignin inside the cells of the wood to swell a little and fill out the space. Often, if the bump is shallow, you can get the surface to return to flat again.

In this case I've a feeling Highline's ding is somewhat too deep and the wood fibres actually broken. But there's no harm in trying.

There could be harm in trying. Because the guitar is painted in all nearby areas, if it soaks up too much moisture, that water has no easy escape route, and you may very well see "paint rot" and flaking near the gash, as the soaked up moisture will try to find a way out.
The gash needs to be sealed, i.e. the exact opposite.

Returning to this for a moment, actually that isn't right.

In the method described we're not putting water into the wood at all, but merely using the heat of steam to swell the wood fibres. In fact, the steam doesn't need to be there at all, and some people do this simply with a household iron set at the right temperature directly on the wood. However, steam is intrinsically exactly the right temperature and also prevents the possibility of scorching the wood, so that's usually the preferred way it's done.

This is what it looks like. On a heavily damaged Strat body I was restoring, the deeper dents had to be filled but the small bumps could be coaxed flat with heat. The paper towel is wet, the brown paper on top is just there to prevent my wife's iron becoming discoloured:

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The steam evaporates, it doesn't go into the wood. But it heats the lignin in the cell fibres to just the point where it becomes liquid and swells, causing the wood to resume its previous shape, and then hardens as it cools, maintaining the new form.

Exactly the same process of softening and resetting of the lignin is used to bend wood, for example, with acoustic guitar sides, or in furniture making.

Sometimes, if we want to focus the heat in a very small area we can use the tip of a soldering iron - though you need one with a thermostat so you can adjust it low enough. At soldering temperature it would burn the wood.

However, there are two reasons I probably wouldn't use this method on Highline's ding.

The first is, you'd have to be extremely accurate to heat the wood without melting the surrounding lacquer. I don't know the melting point of polyurethane - and I wouldn't want to find out by damaging this guitar further.

And the more significant reason is that from Highline's photo it looks like the wood fibres are actually broken, and therefore the method won't work. You can't expand a ruptured wood cell, in the same way you can't inflate a burst balloon.

Still, so long as you protect the surrounding finish from excess heat, it will do no harm to try.

Cheers - C

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:49 pm
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Ceri, as always, thanks for the info!

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 6:41 am
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63supro wrote:
Ceri, as always, thanks for the info!

Heehee - too much, I know! :lol:

Sometimes my typing runs away out of control...

Cheers man - C

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 1:09 am
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Ceri wrote:
Heehee - too much, I know! :lol:

Sometimes my typing runs away out of control...


Not a bit of it, Ceri -- I appreciate the detailed tutorial.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 7:26 pm
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Not at all C. It's much appreciated.

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 6:30 am
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The Steam treatment absolutely works.

I had a bad ding occur right behind the bridge when a tchotchke got knocked off the shelf and bounced off my partscaster that was sitting in a stand nearby . Had it not been right in the middle of the body and so deep and round I’d have let it mingle with all the other dings and scratches but this one just had zero mojo. I did the finish myself and the body is ash with a transparent hunter green finish and poly topcoat so I was reluctant to fill and lose the grain continuity in addition to trying to match the color. I had read about the steam approach but was fearful I’d scorch the surrounding poly so had been putting this project off completely. After reading this I decided what the hell, I’ll give it a whirl. I put some water straight in the wound and let it sit for a minute or two to soak in and then using my soldering iron applied the heat with folded damp paper towel as the buffer. Took quite a few hits with the iron as I didn’t want to hold it there too long so did short spurts of heat then wipe with a cool damp cloth to keep the surrounding poly from getting too hot but it was a success. The grain is visible and intact and the ding is now considerably shallower. My plan next is to drop some superglue in there and level it out then buff it using the method I saw here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVScFJoe24

I tried to take a couple photos but all I had handy was my blackberry and taking a macro with that was completely useless. So I know if there isn’t pics it didn’t happen but it definitely did happen. Thanks Ceri.

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 6:48 am
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Wow, fantastic! :)

Hats off to you for having at it, and for making a success of it. Deep respect. 8)

Cheers man - C

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Post subject: Re: Dinged my baby. Need advice
Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 10:52 pm
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Capt. C, great video. Thanks for posting!


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