Getting Ready to Repair the Soundboard

Tuesday, April 21, 2009.

So I have started with my repair of the soundboard. To begin with, I thought I would make sure to document what it looked like before the repair:

You can just see the faint crack going most of the way up the center. I would have included a picture of the outside, but there was really nothing to see in that photo - the crack was almost impossible to see with the naked eye and did not show up at all on the picture.

And here are pictures right after I managed to get it in half. To do this, I had to purchase a heat gun rather than using a hair dryer as I had planned (my wife's hair dryer puts out almost no heat at all!).


One note of caution for anyone like me who has never used one before - I purchased one of those heat guns that are sold in the wallpaper section of Lowe's - those things put out some serious heat. I actually scorched the wood a tiny bit without even trying.

Here are the repair blocks I made to glue on the inside and outside of each half. I made about 40 of them. You will notice I made a small mark on some of them - this was a visual reference I used to let me quickly find the side I sanded in preparation for gluing.


Me sanding one of the blocks. I am using 600 grit paper for this. I am hoping that is fine enough for this repair step. I also sanded the mating areas on the soundboard with 600 grit paper and wiped both down with a clean, dry rag before gluing.

And, finally, here I have clamped the repair blocks to the top of each side using hide glue and clothespins. I am only gluing the blocks on the top tonight because I was worried that if I tried to clamp on the bottom as well, something was going to get knocked out of position. I would rather take two nights to do this than mess it up by being in a hurry.



Now we wait till tomorrow night.