Square-Neck Resonator Guitar | National
This is a square-neck Resonator guitar, which is a very famous metal body guitar made by National.
In this case, there was a crack alongside the machine head holes on the headstock. We don’t know the reason why but guess it was due to an accident or shrinkage. Also, the headstock was broken at the nut on the bass side. A seemingly thoughtless, poor repair made a simple problem much worse.
This old repair job made me think of the pioneer days when people had to be self-sufficient. When they couldn’t get good glue easily or find a skilled repair person, they had to make their guitar at least playable by doing repairs themselves using precious wood screws. The nut using the toothbrush handle is priceless. Even so, it is amazing that this guitar has been played for more than 30 years in this condition.
There are so many cases of old repairs like this done in North America that it somehow makes me reconsider our present materialistic world.
We decided to make a new section on the bass side because it was beyond repair, but the National logo had to be left as is.
It was relatively easy to remove the head from the neck because of its poor joint.
I had to cut the head on the bass side diagonally on the grain in order to retain the logo.
The mahogany selected for the new section had to be cut diagonally on the grain to follow the same direction as the headstock grain.
The outline of the headstock was shaped using the template I made previously.
A slot for the strings, machine head holes and the back of the headstock were shaped and sanded to prepare for finishing.
The color then had to be matched to the rest of the head. When the finish was dry, the head was attached to the neck, and the new bone nuts and machine heads were installed.
The precious, fragile National decal was saved and the repair was complete.
