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The Ovation Balladeer that I had in house doing a crack repair and re-fret ia about ready to spray. I got a lot of help from Frank Ford about repairing Ovation’s catalyzed resin finish and I must thank him.

I ended up routing out the fractures in the film that were under the but not through the top layers of the film with my dermal , base and a dental bit till I got to the fracture. Then cleaned and refilled with CA. leveled with razor micro-plane. Sanded to 600, coated with 1# shellac and I am ready to apply nitro over coat. Luckily the under surface cracks were in the dark areas of the tobacco bust so they were easy to color with a small amount of transparent dark brown stain. 99.8 % of these fills are invisible. One of them can be seen if inspected very close.

The crack repair in the top plate was straight forward and is all but invisible. There was too much oxidation and discoloration in the edges of the crack to be invisible without doing a splint type repair and I did not want to do that because that would have meant major finish repair. I added a small .06 thick counter grain graft of Sitka inside to support the crack and all is level and well.

I inlayed his initials in monogram form at what would be the 21st fret in MOP and Gold MOP. No issues there at all. It looks great.

Now for the disaster
Re-fret went well till I started filling the bevel on the frets, then suddenly the plastic binding started cracking if I looked at it wrong. None came unattached, just cracked. One place is in line with a fret as would be expected if the tang interfered with the binding but the other three were between frets. It is like the stuff has been freeze dried. I am debating on whether to very carefully melt in some plastic shavings with acetone or to remove, replace and re-fret. That will mean a bunch more work on a guitar not worth much more than the cost of this repair bill already racked up.I have done this once before with good success but it is tricky not to get too much acetone on the binding. It takes just a whisper and no more or you will melt more than you wanted.

I will not accept another Ovation finish repairs again because the film requires a nasty solvent not available to the general public.

WHat, your turning your back on your niche market?

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

rapidly

Got pictures?

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

No............... Diane left the camra in Nebraska in April. The grandkids are coming down here The 21st and they will be bringing it with them. But This repair will be out the door next week come hail or high water.