Martin Backpacker guitar Repair

[stan]

Long story short, a friend stepped on his Martin Backpacker, smashing the back.
He was resigned to the fact that he had just created himself a wall hanger.
I told him I thought I could fix it one way or another.
Weeks went by but it eventually ended up in my hands via another mate.

the top was fine. It has been signed by a protege of Tommy Emmanuel's, Jie (?)Robinson, who now plays in Nashville...

[stan]

The back was another story:

[stan]

It was all there.
I wanted to fix the back rather than remove and replace it, but the latter was an option if needed
The little guitar had travelled for years with Michael and I wanted to save as much if it as possible, and wanted to try the challenge of a repair like this.



The bigger bits were removed, and an internal brace was glued back in position



Outside edge was repaired first. The pieces had to be replaced and glued in a certain order due to the way the edges were fractured, otherwise it would be way too difficult to get the last piece in. The small white painted dowel at the bottom of the pic was placed in to stop the back from caving in whilst pieces were being replaced. It kept the bottom level and flat, otherwise there would be a sunken area.




Also the sides wanted to spring out, got to love Irwin clamps

[tonyw]

Jimmy Cargill or his dad Merv would fix it, cant recommend them enough.

http://www.cargillcustomguitars.com.au/

But it seems you have in under control Stan

[stan]

In the area where small bits had splintered, there weren't any pieces to replace, so I made up a filler/paste:
Dragging a blade down the back, with the grain, yielded dust a bit like when sanding. I initially mixed this with CA glue and rubbed it into the shattered area, the CA is very thin and runs into the timber, sealing up the parts that were cracked, but not broken, the dust was mixed in with this to form a paste to fill the small shattered out bits.
Whilst a very strong and effective repair, I was later to find out it took mega sanding to get any stain to penetrate... Live and learn

[stan]

Piece by piece the broken bits and splinters and shards went back together:



Small edge crack fixed with filler method:

[stan]

After more of an inspection , I noticed a small crack between the body and the back on the opposite side the the main repairs.
Easy fixed: wedge, glue (Titebond) and clamp.
Titebond was used for all the main gluing

[stan]

The whole back was then totally sanded back, and taped up , then stained.
I used Feast Watson dark teak:



More layers make it darker and also hide the joins better:





More rubbing back and more stain...

[stan]

A few minor dings were filled with a light Timbermate and restained.
Whilst the repair was not perfect, that kind of worked in a way as it was another chapter in the well lived life of this little traveller.

The whole body of the guitar was very dry, and I am guessing it originally had some sort of oiled finish, now long dried out.

So on went the Danish oil:



The tuners were left on and I worked around them, turned out fine:



So after working around the strings for so long, I decided on taking them off, which is what I should have done in the first place

[stan]

I think it turned out OK :