Repairing Top Cracks

As time goes on, I'm sure you'll here many of my gripes about customer repairs. Almost all the repairs that I see are climate based damage, and was easily preventable. I think the three most common repairs I get back are Lifting Bridges, Sharp Fret Ends, and Top Cracks.

Top cracks are absolutely the worst. No one ever happy with top cracks and they always end up lose-lose. We lose because the customer thinks the guitar is faulty (and in turn will never buy one of our guitars again), the end-user loses because his guitar is damaged and will never look like new, and the guitar loses because its owner neglected it. Then you always get to hear from the customer how "He has 10 other guitars and none of them have cracked so it must be your fault"

If you've ever repaired a top crack then you know how frustrating they can be to repair, particularly with modern UV polyester finish (Which we use). I actually prefer to receive the guitar totally dried out with a big honkin wide open crack, rather than a guitar which has normalized and the crack closed up. When the crack is open wide its easy to shove glue in there and seal it, but when its closed it is so much harder.

When I first started repairing closed top cracks I tried all kinds of different tactics. I tried using Thin Crazy glue (CA), watered down carpenters glue, think epoxy. CA would hold the crack closed, but was too brittle and the crack would re-open easily during the next winter. Watered down yellow glue was impossible to get into the crack fully, you just couldn't get it thinned down enough. Whatever happened you always ended up with a weak join.

Well two weeks ago I phoned Dan Erlewine to talk to him about truss rod wrenches and he gave me the most brilliant idea I had heard in a while. It was like an "A-HA! Why didn't I think of that?!" moment. He suggested rubbing carpenters glue onto the crack, then placing a small suction cup on top and forcing it up and down like a pump. This forces glue into the crack with pressure, unlike just rubbing it with your finger. You just use a small 1" diameter cup. Something like you hand your Christmas lights with. So simple a monkey can do it.