French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

You can see how worn the corners were here:





After gluing most of the belly cracks (I found a few more) I had a go at repairing the corners with my usual repair wood but i wasn't happy with the result, as the grain really didn't match. The grain on this bass top is wide at the flanks, and wavy. So I tried using the reed-by-reed technique i posted a link to a week ago.

I cut away a part of the damaged wood along the grain line, then glued in a single piece of wide grain spruce. Then trimmed it back, and then added another.









I'm working from the back here but i check the front to make sure the grain lines are reasonably straight. They will be covered in a dark varnish, but with purfling repaired they will look much better.

I addition, these corners - and a lot of the edges - will get a half-edging repair. so what you see above will be covered with perhaps 2-3mm of tighter grained spruce, which will be better for gluing to the blocks!