Marks Yamaha

Posted onAuthorlarry

My friend Mark of the world famous Markosa Studios who has recorded all of my CDs gave me a new Yamaha dreadnought guitar that had a busted and missing head stock. he said “Here make a wall decoration of some kind out of it, it’s no good for anything else”. It laid around the shop for 5 or 6 years and since I had some slack time I decided to do the right thing … fix it.

Yamha Dred
It was a bad break meaning not easy to re glue even if I still had the piece which I didn’t. So I had to make a new one. I have done this before on a twelve string which has a lot more strain on the joint where I reversed the angle of the break and tucked it under the fret board where it could not escape. but it was not pleasing to my eye so I wanted to replace this 6 string at the original break angle knowing I had to beef it up in some way.

I used a heat gun to remove the fret board and the truss rod and cleaned everything up to fresh wood for re gluing.

  • saw off to sguare
  • calculate angle to get a clean plane
  • getting there
  • reduce it to a fine edge
after everything was out of the way I began sanding and planing the break to a clean flat surface to re-glue it with tite bond glue.
  • gling up a block
  • findirng the right angle
  • finding the glue angle
  • fron an old Drawing of a martin guitar

I glued up a block of Mahogany that I thought was a good match, much bigger than I needed because I wasn’t sure how I would make it work because it wouldn’t take the strain with out some extra help.

I carefully calculated the right angle which took some time and and sawed it and sanded it true and flat then sawed it to a basic shape and glue it to the neck.,making sure it all lined up and had the old Martin Guitar angle.

  • cutting a rough angle
  • finding the angle
  • reducing the thickness to 1/2 inch with a warner planer
  • cutting to a basic over sized shape
  • carving to rough shape using shim stock to protect the neck
  • removing a small piece of wood for the truss rod end piece
  • Glueing in the strips with the truss rod installed making sure it is flat and out of the way of the fret board
after every thing was glued and dried over night I set about reinforcing the joint as best I could. There is not much wood to work with so it has to be small and strong. So I found a small piece of rose wood the right thickness and cut two slots with a back saw and filed them flat and straight and glued the strips into the joint.
  • drilling for a bamboo dowel
  • Bamboo chop stick ready to trim off
  • carving a little closer to the neck
  • wood rasp to further the progress
  • Carving with a knife made from a straight razor
  • Getting closer
After bringing the the strips down flush I drilled a hole in the joint making sure it didn’t go all the way through and glued in a piece of bamboo chop stick and trimmed it of flush and carved away more wood leaving a Martin type volute or bump at the neck peg head.

Glueing on the veneer
  • Gluing the fret board down with a rubber exercise strap
  • veneer
  • finished carving and trimmed
  • installed some cheap tuners with some 1917 gibson tuner bushings
  • all I need now is stain and finish after making sure it will hold
After gluing the fret board to the neck I made a thin book matched veneer for the new peg head and glued it down tight and shaped it to standard Martin shape.Then I found some used tuning machines and installed them. After I strung it up and played it a while…. I think I might invest in some better tuners because this cheap new old Yamaha sounds really good.