Quite a few years ago I worked with an old Irish fella called John McGarrigle, He could be irrascible and sometimes downright difficult and threatening, but I always got on fine with him. After I'd known him a few years we got talking about guitars one day, and it turned out that he had a couple of guitars in his loft. One was an old nylon-strung classical guitar, but the other was an arch-topped jazzer, which he reckoned was a Hofner and was really old. Anyway, the headstock was broken on the jazzer, and there were missing or broken tuners on the classical guitar, but, John being John, he insisted on bringing them into work for me to "have a look at them" by which he really meant fix them for him. Well, I took them home, they eventually ended up in my loft and were forgotten - or at least John never mentioned them.
Anyway, eventually John retired then I left the company and moved away and the guitars ended up in the loft of my new house. I kept in touch with John and every Xmas he'd ring up to "check he had the right address" for our Xmas card, but it was really just to have a chat. Xmas 2009 came, and I didn't hear from him, and by Xmas Eve I was quite worried. I'd always liked John and I'd been chuffed he'd chosen to stay in touch, and I knew his health wsn't good .....
So, on Xmas Eve I was driving home from work and decided to try to call him. His wife answered and I feared the worst, but he was there and we had a chat. He'd been ill, so hadn't sent any Xmas cards, but was on the mend and I was relieved he was still around.
Then a couple of months later I heard he'd died of a heart attack. I have to say I was really upset, and it still makes me sad that he's gone, but I do still have his jazz guitar and have decided to do it up, as a sort of tribute to an old guy with whom I had next to nothing in common but against all the odds became friends with.
Now, the broken headstock may turn out to be quite simple .... you see it's actually just become detached along the line of the joint. I can only assume it was never glued properly, and both sides of the joint are clean and fit together nicely. The veneer on the front has come away, so my approach will be to glue the veneer back down and clamp it, and then when that has dried nicely, I'll glue the headstock back on the neck ...
... so my questions to the forum are:
1) what kind of glue should I use? Is "No More Nails" suitable? Or do I need something a bit more specialised? I do appreciate that I may never be able to string it back up to full tension, so it may just go on the wall as a reminder of my old friend.
2) how do I clamp the headstock on while it dries? Is there a recognised best-practice to bind the headstock on? How did they do it originally? Or will it have been glued first and then machined?
By the way, it's not a Hofner, I don't think. It has a rather crude square sticker on the headstock with the brand name "Zenith" on it, but that may cover another brand, as I know in the 50s and 60s it was common for music shops to import guitars and then put their own brand on them. The pickup is and after-market thing, combined with the scratch-plate, and that is a Hofner part. I'll try to get some photos up.
But, in the meantime ..... HELP!
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