epoxy ??

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Arnold Schnitzer

A few years back I restored a nice French bass that had an epoxied-in breast patch. After planing out all the patch wood, I was left with a thick, uneven layer of epoxy. I tried every possible chemical I could get my hands on, and nothing worked. My solution was to run a convex scraper blade against a grinding wheel to create a vicious burr, then scrape until it went dull (5 minutes or so), then repeat over and over. It took a few days to get down to untouched wood, and some original material was lost. During the process I learned several new curse words and used them often.

Do you happen to know what shop that was that did that patch?

I saw an Italian Bass with the same thing and it was like a horror. What a crime.

The sad thing about this is that at least one shop I know of that did that epoxied-in breast patch deal is STILL doing it like that as well as other things on the 'never do' list. Yet, people still go there thinking they are getting a good deal on an old restored bass or just letting them restore their own bass.

How long can a Doctor purposely commit similar crimes to patients before getting shut down?

If only the poor basses could speak up for themselves.

Whenever a bass from that shop comes in for sale or trade and I know before hand where it's been, I usually back down on any such deal for trade or sale. Sometimes however, its too late as I find out later that what I bought was once restored over there. My bad luck in that case because re-fixing it is way harder and more expensive that fixing it right in the first place. Not to mention that these epoxe repairs fail over time., Epoxy does not bond the repair wood like hide glue does so it will need fixing again regardless.