New Guy : Broke Silvertone acoustic to biscuit reso

[Silvertone]

Thanks for the add! I was in a pretty bad car wreck a few years ago and I luckily survived but my truck and my 50 year old Sears Dreadnought acoustic did not. The neck snapped off at the heel but left a good chunk of the heel stuck in the neck block. I got the broken piece out of the block and re-glued it to the neck but unfotunately there's some of the wood missing. So... I guess i have a couple of questions. First, what is the preferred fill method for a guitar neck? I have used wood glue with sawdust, cutting the hole square and making a wood plug, on smaller holes I have used CA glue with baking soda to fill holes before. It's a big gouge probably 3/8" deep and 2 1/2" long running from the body to the neck side of the heel. I'd like to dowel it but to my surprise there's a steel reinforcement rod in the neck (I had another old Silvertone that the neck bowed a lot. There could not have been a steel rod in that guitar. That guitar is the reason I took up bottleneck.). So... all that to ask, does anybody use two part epoxy as a filler for acoustic necks? 

Since I've decided to toss in a biscuit cone I already routed out a 9 1/2" hole in the top and made some plywood rings. I've been looking at bolt on necks and also been thinking about figuring out a way to add a neck stick to help reinforce the neck. I built a cigar box reso with a biscuit bridge and neck stick that has worked out okay. What's your opinion on neck sticks?

Thanks in advance for any insights or tips and tricks you care to share.

[pete1951]

It’s late at night here in the UK and your questions are many and would need many pages to answer them all fully. Do you have any photos of your guitar they would be a big help.
Is the neck off the guitar ? Most standard acoustics don’t convert to a resonator well because the bridge is not high enough about the body ( the bridge needs to be quite high if you are using a standard cover plate) having the neck off means you can change the neck angle,which allows the bridge to go up.
More after we find out how far you have gone .
Pete

[Silvertone]

Sorry! Yeah I definitely overshared and rambled. I’ll take some photos and post them when I get home. Thanks!
I added 3 pictures. The first shows the break. The second shows the pocket on it's way to being cleaned up and the third is the glue up of the neck with Titebond II. you can see part of the crack/void on the left side of the neck.

Attachments:

83CB1220-F7B8-4F47-B2BD-25601EF2FBAC.heic (2.75 MB)

9A8E2606-FD4F-4E0E-9524-FFE375EE28FF.heic (1.42 MB)

B69DE32F-305F-4F4F-ACCF-18B886EF1B50.heic (2.42 MB)

[pete1951]

Sorry, can’t seem to open attachments.( I am one of the older members of the forum and not very computer literate)

On neck sticks: on a standard resonator the neckstick holds the neck in place, the body is usually much stronger than a normal acoustic. If you are making a large hole in the front of an acoustic a neckstick can be used to stiffen the front. It can go from the neckblock to the end block and stop the guitar from folding or bending with the force of the strings. I have done this to several guitars and sometimes have to join the stick in the middle as there is not room to get it in in one piece. The stick goes under the well and is usually screwed to it ( on Biscuit and Tricone resonators)

Hopefully someone else will open and post your pics.

Try not to rush the job, there are some things ( ideally) to do before you cut holes and glue bits back
Pete

[Pickers Ditch]

I too cannot read those heic files.
Can you post them as the more usual jpeg files for us old'ns with steam driven PCs, please?

[Silvertone]

Pete1951 thanks! Yeah I’m probably older than you and it took me forever just to figure out a way to get pictures in my reply. I’m probably doing it wrong. I tried figuring out how to convert a picture to a URL but I’m definitely not tech savvy.
I cut the hole in the top and used some baltic birch plywood to make the well. I’m shooting for about a 4 degree neck angle. I will anchor the soundwell to the back (or just to the neck stick if I decide to go that route) with posts. The dovetail on the neck is fairly short at about 1/2” and so I’m trying to figure out a trick way to make a spline joint around the end of the steel truss and to convert the dovetail to a mortise and tenon with a new neck block to make a bolt on neck or… a through the body, under the sound well anchored to the tail block stick. I always seem to spend more time thinking then doing?
If someone is tech savvy and knows an easier way to post photos, please do clue me in. Thanks!

[pete1951]

May 14, 2023 7:16:23 GMT Silvertone said:

I will anchor the soundwell to the back (or just to the neck stick if I decide to go that route) with posts. !

One thing to keep in mind is the wood the guitar is made of. Dobros and (most) wooden resonators are made of much thicker timber than a standard acoustic. If you use posts you could put them between the neckstick (or the well) and any cross bars on the back to help spread the load. When I have converted a standard acoustic to a reso I usually have glued an extra thin ( 1/8”-3/16”) decorative timber to the top, this helps stiffen and also covers the old sound hole so I can get it looking like a ‘proper’ resonator.
Pete

[davey]

The files are a Mac format so you need to export or save them as a Jpeg. Here they are:

[Silvertone]

Thanks very much Davey. I'll convert pictures over to jpeg before I try sharing anymore.

[Silvertone]

Here's a couple pictures of the gouge after glue up and one of the sound well rings i'm working on. The posts in the sound well picture were just temporary braces so that I could check height of the bridge.

Attachments: