Jack On The Rocks

It's great having a guitar at a party. Everyone's singing and you're playing and the beer is flowing and—yikes!

Sometimes guitars can party too hard. 

This little semi-acoustic got a bit of a smack as the good times rolled. It was fitted with a side-mounted output jack and it landed (quite neatly, really) on it. The jack disappeared into the guitar and left the side and finished crushed. This image was taken after I'd pulled it back into some sort of shape. 

If this guitar was a super expensive thing with huge sentimental value, we might be looking at an correspondingly expensive side-repair. Sometimes, however, that's not warranted and all that's needed is to get the thing playing again with as little fuss as possible. The easiest/cheapest way of sorting this one is to make the damage good, enlarge the hole and mount the jack on a Les Paul-style plate.

The crushed wood had become quite flexible and trying to enlarge the hole in that damaged material would have caused messy chipping and tear-outs. That's not the way to go. I wanted to saturate the area in water-thin cyanoacrylate glue to harden it but even after poking it roughly to shape, the damaged area was still below the surface level and was pretty flaky and messy. 

Enter the Mystery Invention that I teased you with on Facebook and Twitter last night. 

I fished a hefty bolt through the F-hole and gently snugged up a nut on it. This pulled the crushed wood back into something close to its proper shape. I loosened off, saturated the area with super glue and retightened the nut. Incidentally, that white 'washer' you see is a piece of teflon. There's a corresponding piece on the inside too. The glue won't adhere to this and I'm not really keen on ending up with a honking great bolt glued in the jack-hole. The shaft of the bolt doesn't contact the edges but I was very careful to avoid any glue squeeze out contacting there too. 

Once it's dry, I can enlarge that hole more cleanly. A little, basic, touch-up and clean-up and the jack plate can be installed. This guitar is ready for the next party. 

Super-involved repairs are justified in many cases but, sometimes, quick and easy is the way to go.

Even quick and easy should be done properly, though.