Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi, a fellow wants me to re-glue this sound hole rosette on his ovation. It's about 1/2 - 2/3 unglued. There's nothing else wrong with the guitar seems like I should be able to simply clean most of the glue off and reglue with titebond. There's nothing structural about it. Am I missing anything?

Yeah, I suppose you could. But why?

See my comments on other Ovation threads about dropping anvils on them.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Haha, yup. Not my favorite.

Seems like a perfect place for CA. Probably get away with no cleanup.

_________________
http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Cool, I didn't think of that, my mind went straight to titebond.

Another vote for thin CA. If you put some wax (paraffin or candle wax) on the top all around the rosette and wick the CA into the gap you'll stand a better chance of it not adhering to the finish. I'm always afraid of using accelerator around finish - sometimes it seems to make it cloudy - so I would just use the glue and a little light clamping

How do you thin CA?

Also when you say use wax around the rosette how do you suggest applying the wax?

Apply wax with your fingers.

You can get CA glue in varying viscosity from suppliers like LMII and such.

I've got this paste finishing wax, will this work? Or should I melt a candle and apply the warm wax, or just wipe around the rosette with a dry candle?

Afterwards do I just wipe the wax off, or will I have to buff it out?

Conor

That's the stuff.

I wouldn't warm the wax since it'll be tough to control. You can use the paste finishing wax just fine, just wear gloves. The candle wax could work I just haven't tried it myself.

All the wax does it make any runout of glue stick to the wax and not stick to the guitar top. After you've done your glue up all you should really have to do is wipe off the wax with some guitar polish. The wax is pretty benign stuff (it won't eat through your finish) so don't overthink it too much.

That will work but I keep a little piece of paraffin (or the stub of a candle) and just rub the wax on the surface next to where I'm going to do the repair. The CA won't stick to the wax, it kind of beads up and you can chip it off with your fingernail. Obviously don't get the wax into the joint you are trying to glue.

CA (cyanoacrylate) glue comes in several viscosities - thin (or water thin), medium, gel. You can get them all from various vendors including StewMac and GlueBoost (both OLF sponsors). Normally you can't find the thin stuff at a hardware store but hobby shops might have it.

I use the medium for most gluing tasks where I can get the nozzle in the joint, the thin stuff will wick its way into cracks by capillary action. You can get little pipettes to apply it - its wonderful for minor cracks that aren't opened up. I think in this case you can probably get medium under the rosette but the thin would work its way under the area that hasn't come loose yet.

When I'm done with a repair like this I usually do buff it with a fine auto polishing compound (with no wax or silicon). You can remove the wax with denatured alcohol or just polish with a rag.

Be careful Conor if you screw up it might sound better.....

Be hard to make it worse

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Guess I don't have the guts for that. It's not mine, even if it is a POS.
I'd probably use clear double stick carpet tape and cut it after sticking. You can also buy sheets of "stickum" for pickguards. Peel off paper, stick to rosette, peel off the other side of paper and adhere. You could even throw a couple of clamps and a caul on it overnight to be sure.

Oh Jeez, another Ovation bash...

Don't try to clean the glue off the underside of the rosette. The factory used epoxy to glue these to the polyester finish.

Personally, I would not use CA on the Ovation rosette as it's liable to wick between the pearloid layer and the plastic rosette and dissolve the oak-leaf pattern silk-screened to the underside of the plastic rosette.

A better bet is to use hardware store-grade 5-minute epoxy. That's what the factory used and what I use to glue rosettes onto the Os I've restored.

Hold it into place with your fingers until the glue cures. If you have any squeeze-out, clean it up with denatured alcohol before it cures.

If you have a Rockler or Woodcraft near you they usually carry (thin viscosity CA) as well.

Yep. Haters gotta hate...

Or, your local hobby shop sells it. Modelers were using CA long before luthiers 'discovered' it.

I usually take the rosette off and use regular contact cement to glue it back - quick and easy. Spread it on nice and thick, let it dry, squish the parts together. . .

_________________
Cheers,

Frank Ford

FRETS.COM
HomeShopTech
FRETS.NET