The Silvertone Acoustic H621 Pt. 4 Does Glue Really Work?

 The Silvertone Acoustic H 621 Pt. 4


So I was able to break the neck somewhat cleanly after I cracked it, and after Googling "Gluing a broken guitar neck," I ended up on the "Instructables" website, which had a tutorial on this exact thing. As he points out, the wood glue is stronger than the actual wood, so if you get is set up correctly, it should hold. The only difference is that he used Elmer's Wood Glue for his repair and I used Titebond.

Clamps and wraps

First, I poured the Titebond all over both pieces, using a small hobby paint brush to catch all the crevices in the neck. Then, using seemingly every clamp I had in the garage, as well as a strip of nylon that had just come on a patio cover I had purchased, I clamped and wrapped as much of the glued pieces as I possibly could in order to create the seal. I was extremely careful not to clamp too tightly on any single point of the neck so that it set as cleanly as possible.

It seemed to work, so I left the whole thing for a few days, resisting the urge to come out an check first thing the following morning. I had to tell myself, either it was going to work or it wasn't, and no amount of overchecking was going to change that.

The mushy part

Two days later, I unwrapped it all, and for the most part it felt okay. There was one part, however, where it seemed as though one of the glued slivers was a bit mushy. I slid my hand up and down then neck, and it seemed like my finger would catch at the mushy point. I needed to glue that part down.

The thinnest thing that I could think of to apply glue was a razor, and I had the old one that I had just used to scrape the glue from where the bridge was. Now I was going to use the same blade to apply glue into the mushy part of the neck. I covered the blade in glue, and shoved it into the cracks on the neck that it would fit into, using a paper towel to wipe any excess, and then once again using the clamps in all sorts of unusual ways to hold it together.

24 hours later, I checked again, and the mushiness was gone! There is a very slight catch at the glue down points, but not enough to really impede my playing. I'm not going to be doing any fast finger work up and down the neck on this guitar, and everything is holding.

I pulled some strings, and started to string it up. The first problem was that the ebony bridge pins that I had purchased didn't fit. A quick inspection revealed that when I glued down the bridge, some of the glue had plugged the holes. I used one of the old pins to clear it out. The tuning machines were a bit stiff, but were working okay until I got to the one for the D string that was bent. As I tried to get the string in tune, the tuner wouldn't turn. It was broken, and it prevented me from stringing the guitar up.

Bent Machine

I had been going back and forth on changing the tuners, and had finally decided that since they were working, I was just going to leave them. I had bought new ones off eBay from a vendor in China for $10, though, and just figured that I'd use them at some point in the future. And now, here was the future.

I wanted to drill pilot holes, but my drill wasn't charged, so I took the opportunity, with the tuning machines off, to add a bit decoration to the headstock. It seemed like a good time to paint my name on the headstock and on the 15th fret, as well as paint some of the areas where the headstock was chipped. I liked the way the red had looked on the guitar, so more red it was.

Who's Guitar?

Bridge attached, pins in

When my drill was charged, I drilled the pilot holes, and put the tuners on with no problems. I then put the strings on, and here's what it all sounded like.