01/27/2021
Here's an interesting repair and a fun challenge; an earlier 20th c. Weissenborn guitar with a collapsed top. You can see the distortion in the top indicative of bracing failure in the first two photos. Just casually poking around with my pallet knives, after removing the back, reveals several failed hide glue joints. My plan is to not reuse the braces that I removed, but replace them. The guitar is old enough to merit a museum-grade repair; that is, to use the original adhesive, hide glue. Anything I do to this instrument should be able to be undone and the guitar returned to it's original condition. However, I will tell you that, after checking out the original roughly done bracing, and knowing that the owner will be playing this instrument, I will upgrade the quality of bracing material itself as well as apply a more modern understanding of shaping to the new braces. Don't tell anybody.
