Gibson ES-175 Broken Neck

 

 

This beautiful jazz guitar is owned by Mr. Dieter Jagiela. He happens to be one of Northeast Ohio's better blues guitarist. He has toured internationally with some of music's finest. On one of the flights back from a tour this guitar had met a very unfortunate accident.

It's hard to tell from the first couple of pictures ,but the neck was severely broken due to bad baggage handling at the airport. We all have heard of this happening , but here is positive proof that it is extremely important to take every precaution available to protect your instrument when you are travelling. I have even heard of musicians paying for an extra seat so that the instrument does not have to be subjected to the dreaded "baggage handlers".  In this case it might of prevented this accident.

	I am lucky to have a professional player that brings me his most prized possessions when they have problems.This is a early 70's Gibson ES-175 with a broken neck.		I removed the tuning machines so that I could properly repair the neck . The break doesn't seem that bad from the front
	It always pays to buy the extra insurance when your travelling on the airlines with your valuable instrument. If not, it can be very difficult to get reimbursed for damages. This really is as bad as it looks. Ouch!		I could not get the break to close up as tight as I like it to be. I thought there was an obstruction
	After a very close inspection , I saw that a previous repair with a very hard epoxy and a misalignment of the broken wood chips had prevented the joint from closing up tightly		As you can see I try to use cauls when ever I can. If I could of fit more clamps on there I would have
	Here is another view of my clamping procedure		There is a small amount of glue squeeze out after I initially wiped the major amount of glue off
	Another view of the treble side of the neck. seeing the glue escape evenly through the break is a good sign that you have a good glue distribution		After glueing the neck there was some missing wood that needed to be filled
	I made this cleat template to rout out the slots in the neck to be able to reinforce the neck		Here the slots have been routed out to the proper depth. Note the slot on the right is wider on its left side . This was done to fill in more missing wood
	It is important to get as deep as you can to strenghten the joint with a tight fitting cleat		This is another view of the depth of the left slot
	This a picture of the two cleats that were cut to match the slots with the same template . They are a perfect matched inlay		The cleats are being glued home for a perfect fit to insure stability of the repair
	Cleats have been glued and are ready for shaping to fit neck profile		This picture shows the cleats after they have been filled with wood filler, sanded, and ready for toner
	4 or 5 coats of tobacco brown lacquer toner has been sprayed with 3 coats of clear on top of that		The headstock was also sprayed with 3 coats of clear laquer to freshen things up a bit
	You can't see the cleats in this closeup view of the finish after about 8 days		Another view shows how I faded the tobacco brown into the original finish
	This is the way it's supposed to look like		The nut was replaced because the old one didn't fit properly after I had cleaned out the old nut slot
	This is Dieter Jagiela intensely playing the blues. I only wish you could hear this because he is such an awesome player		I'm glad to say that Dieter walked away as another Happy Customer!