French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

Have to admit that my strategy is not yet fully crystallised. I wanted to see how well the joint cleaned up first. Yes it will need re-cheeking and I'm fortunate that it isn't heavily figured wood, so the repair may be well hidden if I do it well. I'm not sure that simple bushing of the pegholes is going to strengthen things much. In the Strad Secrets book there's a nice conical bushing method a guy has developed - I really like it. But whether I want to get tooled up for just this repair I don't know.

Over here one of my biggest challenges is to find the wood for these repairs. If I'm going to use maple I have to find and import a neck block. If I use beech or sycamore, I may be able to find something here. Or I could use another wood entirely. Obviously beech was original. Any suggestions for a good supplier?

Also important to remember this is a practical restoration to a working bass condition. There isn't the budget for an "as original" restoration. I really won't be able to save much if any of the original varnish. And since I am replacing the neck block, we may be converting this to a removable neck, too.

[Thomas Erickson]

Originally Posted by Matthew Tucker

I'm not sure that simple bushing of the pegholes is going to strengthen things much. In the Strad Secrets book there's a nice conical bushing method a guy has developed - I really like it. But whether I want to get tooled up for just this repair I don't know.

No, ordinary bushing isn't going to strengthen much, I don't think... Is this "conical" bushing the same as a spiral bushing? That is to say, a thin shave of wood installed with the grain running "around" the inside of the hole, using a tapered caul sort of thing? While I'm not sure that the technique is all that useful on basses in general (as opposed to the other strings), I think that in a case like this it seems like a good idea.

Definitely interested to see what you come up with... and I trust you will fix it and not hang it on the wall...

[Matthew Tucker]

no the conical bushing removes a large conical section of wood on the inside of the cheek at each hole and then filled with a significant plug of new wood, then re-drilled. I doubt if a spiral bushing would do anything. usually they're just for reducing the size of the hole a bit.

[Thomas Erickson]

Well, I hear the spiral bush is a good solution when the cheek is cracked through the peg hole. Clearly more significant on an instrument with a true peg that has to press in, sure, since it will perpetually open the crack - but also seems like a sound idea to me when we'd be talking about placing it inside of a plain bush anyway and the top half of the pegbox is broken off at the holes... Makes sense to me to put the pegbox as solid as possible with new wood, and then reinforce the spot where it broke (the holes) even more; clearly the original wood in that spot is less than ideal or the neck would have broken first and spared the pegbox, yes?

(Pure speculation of course - I'm not qualified! )

[Matthew Tucker]

i have never done a spiral bushing but as far as i know the technique uses a thin spiral of woodshaving in the hole. I fail to see how this can be a structural repair on a head this size!

Possibly better is to plug the hole, drill out a larger hole say 1" and plug THAT, then rebore the shaft hole in the new wood. The conical bushing is a variant of this and I think nicer.

But I'm not sure yet that's what's needed here.

[Thomas Erickson]

Nor do I know what is ideal in this situation.

But the deal with the spiral bush is all in the grain orientation - you're placing the long grain of the "slice" perpendicular to the grains that have split across the peg hole. So you have the wood fibers supporting the first (expanding) load of the peg, rather than the glue joint between grains.

[Steve Alcott]

It's been a while, and I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering how it's going.