Crack repair on a Taylor acoustic guitar
Cracks in your acoustic guitar body can be devastating. They can be caused by impact or simply by exposure to drought, which causes the wood to shrink and crack. Fortunately, most of them are an easy fix, and if you're lucky, they can be made to be very close to invisible. The biggest trick is to get it right the first time- once there is glue in the crack, you will not be able to remove it in case you feel like doing it over.
This crack was nice enough to split pretty "cleanly" and it is easy to fix. To do that, we first have to make sure that the wood isn't dried out and there isn't a gap between the two sides that need to be glued together. If so, the guitar will need to be humidified first.
The crack gets filled with glue and three cleats are made to be placed along the break in between the braces on the inside of the top. We glue them in place with help of rare earth magnets. The next day the crack is almost invisible- you only see it cause you know it's there!
