heel repair on mandolin
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 5:15 am
I was given two older mandolins which I hope to make playable again. One is an Egmond which apart from that seems to be salvegeable and needs only some new frets and a new nut. The more interesting one is of the AMKA brand that I never heard of before, I read that it was dutch as well,probably early 50ies and not quite comparable in quality 
. The defects are also more serious, the neck heel has broken, I suspect it to be a stacked heel that came unglued, there is a dowel in there that seems to be factory original, the loose neck also pressed down on the carved/pressed top which come to be severely warped in the area that goes under the fingerboard.
I thought i could probably reglue the neck,do I need to use superglue instead of titebond because of creep issues?
The remainder of the neck heel is still in the neck block, i m a bit wary of steaming it out because i never done that before and because i am worried about the neckblock coming loose.
Also after repairing the neck, does the top under the fretboard extension really need to touch the top, also here i am abit worried about the wood fracturing.
My aim is to make this a playable instrument, I dont know about vintage value and although quite rare and old and a lot better made than most dutch instruments, it is not a top instrument and it has literally been saved from the trashcan.
Previously I repaired an egmond mandolin with some help from a luthier friend, and completed a stew mac 000 with help from the manual,cumpianos book and this forum and although this is my first post here I got a lot of information and help here which is greatly appreciated
Thanks for any advise,
Rein
. The defects are also more serious, the neck heel has broken, I suspect it to be a stacked heel that came unglued, there is a dowel in there that seems to be factory original, the loose neck also pressed down on the carved/pressed top which come to be severely warped in the area that goes under the fingerboard.I thought i could probably reglue the neck,do I need to use superglue instead of titebond because of creep issues?
The remainder of the neck heel is still in the neck block, i m a bit wary of steaming it out because i never done that before and because i am worried about the neckblock coming loose.
Also after repairing the neck, does the top under the fretboard extension really need to touch the top, also here i am abit worried about the wood fracturing.
My aim is to make this a playable instrument, I dont know about vintage value and although quite rare and old and a lot better made than most dutch instruments, it is not a top instrument and it has literally been saved from the trashcan.
Previously I repaired an egmond mandolin with some help from a luthier friend, and completed a stew mac 000 with help from the manual,cumpianos book and this forum and although this is my first post here I got a lot of information and help here which is greatly appreciated
Thanks for any advise,
Rein