Gig Bag Boo-Boo

I see a lot of damaged guitars that were the results of gig-bag related accidents. Gig bags can fall over, be dropped, stepped on, sat upon, thrown off cliffs, fall out of ultra-high altitude spy planes, run over by monster trucks and other odd things. (In fact, the Wicked Witch of the West was carrying an Ibanez electric guitar in a gig bag when Dorothy’s house fell on her. The scene with the munchkin luthier was cut from the film because the scene ran too long, and the munchkin kept playing Smoke on the Water on an out of tune mandolin rather than trying to repair the aforementioned Ibanez..)

The most common repairs needed in such a case are head-stock cracks, body cracks, and loose braces, and split sides, as was the case in the photo here. This guitar was dropped vertically on its end pin, which caused the guitar sides to “balloon out” momentarily, splitting the sides from either edge of the end block to both waists. Luckily, all the finish stayed on the crack edges.

The repair went as follows: Work glue into the cracks, clamp (with spool clamps) one at a time to close the cracks slowly, keeping the sides aligned properly as you add each clamp.
When dry, wipe lightly with warm water to remove the glue squeeze out. There was no need for touch-up on this guitar as the cracks glued together very cleanly.

As nice as it is to have the lighter weight and ease of a gig bag, a hard case would have saved this guitar from this repair!

-Scott