Posted on July 3, 2026July 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips What To Do When Your Head Falls Off: Instrument Repair Tips and Techniques What To Do When Your Head Falls Off: Instrument Repair Tips and Techniques by Brian Michael and Alex Glasser from their 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #115, 2013 Alex: A peghead reglue is not hard, but it’s a common repair, and one that’s commonly done poorly. We cheated. We took the neck from a broken guitar, removed the tuners, and broke the peghead. Normally, your cracks would be lower, around the nut or volute, but with the tuners removed, it breaks across the tuners. The repair’s the same, though. For most headstock repairs we use hide glue, because it has high heat resistance. We try to make repairs foolproof, so if the customer leaves it in the trunk of his guitar, it won’t break open. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 23, 2026June 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips Soundboard Construction of Vinaccia Mandolins Around 1900 Soundboard Construction of Vinaccia Mandolins Around 1900 by Alfred Woll Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 It is presumed that the Neapolitan mandolin was developed mainly by the Vinaccia family toward the middle of the 18th century. At that time, the instrument was strung with low tension gut and metal strings. Two high braces, one above and one below the soundhole, were strong enough to stabilize the soundboard which had, in addition, a distinct cant and a slight transverse arch. The cant and arch were important features of the soundboard to withstand the pressure exerted by the strings on the bridge. The very early Neapolitan mandolins had been rather small. The width of the soundboard was approximately 165mm at the cant. But in the following decades the size of the soundboards as well as the bodies increased. Another famous Neapolitan mandolin maker, Giovanni Battista Fabricatore, built mandolins with larger bowls. In 1793 he added a third brace between the bridge and the second brace. He also strengthened the soundboard with a longitudinal spruce reinforcement running along the center joint from the third brace over the cant to the tail block, and began using a fingerboard plate, which is a transverse spruce reinforcement on the underside of the soundboard in the area of the wooden frets. These four innovations — larger body, third brace, center reinforcement, and fingerboard plate — are used in Italian lutherie to this day. However, his improvement received little attention at the time, due to rapidly declining interest in the Neapolitan mandolin after 1800. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Dale Phillips Steaming Hide Glue and Laminating Ribs Steaming Hide Glue and Laminating Ribs by James Ham from his 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 I make double basses, and I also do a lot of instrument restoration and repair. My glue of choice for both new work and restoration is hot hide glue. You guitar makers need to take your Titebond and throw it in that bin over there and learn to use hide glue. (laughter, applause) It will make your guitars better. Hot hide glue has a very short working time. I used to clamp the joint dry and without glue, then section-by-section I’d loosen the clamps and insert a little bit of glue. Then I thought, what if I put the glue on first and let it dry, then go along and add a little hot water? Not boiling water, but hotter than tap water — enough to resoften the glue. That worked, and I did many instruments that way, but it was still messy, and loosening the clamps could allow things to slip out of position. One day I went into a vacuum cleaner repair store and saw a steamer, and thought, “Hmmm. What could I do with that?” (laughs) And history was made. What I do now is to use that steamer to reactivate hide glue that was applied earlier to both surfaces and allowed to dry. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Motorized Dish Sander Motorized Dish Sander by Mike Doolin Originally published in American Lutherie #74, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Here’s a motorized dish sander for truing up the edges of sides after gluing in the lining. It’s a 2´-diameter MDF disk that’s radiused to 15´ on one side and flat on the other, with 80-grit sandpaper on both sides. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Two-Step Cutaway Bending Two-Step Cutaway Bending by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #78, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Bending a venetian cutaway with a particularly tight horn presents a challenge. At Huss & Dalton we tried several times to alter our Fox side bender to reliably create tight cutaways, but with very little success. The add-on bending unit usually seen on benders worked well for blunt cutaways, but when the radii got small, the bender crapped out. OK, this admittedly depended on the type of wood involved. Indian rosewood is so accommodating that we often got away with completing the whole job on the Fox bender. Mahogany wasn’t quite as obliging but is cheap enough that an occasional broken side is no reason for tears. Koa was the driving force behind our search for a better system. It was frequently requested by the discriminating fingerstylists who seem to be the guitarists who want cutaway guitars in fancy varieties of wood. Killer sets of koa are also very expensive and become more so every time they are ordered. Other curly woods are just as hard to bend, but a broken piece of fancy walnut (just to pick a species) isn’t the heartbreaker that shattered koa is. The H&D model MJC was our particular bugaboo. Other builders use tighter cutaways, but the MJC was plenty tight enough to drive Jeff (Huss) and Mark (Dalton) close to distraction. There were frequent war councils among shop members about how to conquer the problem, but most of the ideas and all the tool making fell to Mark. The problem wasn’t bending the horn itself. The spring-steel slats of the bending sandwich supported the wood as it went around the horn enough to prevent breakage. It was the inside bend of the cutaway that caused all the problems. The slats simply couldn’t be pulled tight enough during bending to support the wood. There’s no need to elaborate on the failures. Eventually a bending machine was made dedicated to the MJC (Photo 1). Various methods of bending the wood around the cutaway shoe were tried to no avail. The solution turned out to be bending the wood in two stages. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
