This is a very broken Gibson SG. The neck has snapped clean off at the body joint.

It was a fairly clean break, with only one extra piece, that luckily somehow found its way into the pickup cavity. This happened while the owner was playing onstage, luckily this piece wasn’t lost.

While the SG is a great sounding guitar, and very fun to play because of the excellent upper fret access the double cutaway provides, this same double cutaway combined with the neck pickup cavity makes for a structural design nightmare. There just isn’t very much gluing surface in the joint, and the joint itself has no inherent mechanical strength.

In this case, the joint was very poorly cut and fit, with a large gap at the bottom of the joint. Titebond is Gibson’s standard glue, and it has zero gap-filling capabilities. The sides of the joint were fairly tight, and here the glue held. The pull of the strings was finally to much for the wood around neck, and it broke along the grain lines, the joint failed at the bottom while the sides held, ripping off large chunks of the body.

The owner of this guitar thought this was the end. This actually turned out to be a fairly easy fix, though, because of the large gluing surface available.
The frets were also very worn, so we took this opportunity to refret as well.

The first step was to get the neck glued back on though. Now, my standard glue for most repairs is hot hide glue, which is very strong and durable. However, it also has no gap-filling strength. I wanted something that would fill any of the poor joinery and hold it for certain, so I decided to use epoxy.
After carefully test-fitting the pieces together, I mixed up some epoxy, applied, aligned everything up, and clamped it up.

Very straightforward. The break was so irregular that once fitted, it held itself in alignment very well, so I didn’t have to worry about things slipping out of place. I was careful to clean up any squeeze out of epoxy immediately, since once it cures there is no solvent that will dissolve it.
Once it was dried, it was very strong once again. Along the break, the lacquer had chipped away, leaving a noticeable scar. I melted some black stick lacquer into the spot.

Then used some fine sand paper and a hard block to level it.

The owner didn’t want me to spend a whole lot of time on finish touchup, so I considered this good. You can’t even see any evidence of the break!

Now, on to the frets. First, the old ones have to come up. I heat each fret with a soldering iron. This breaks any glue that might have been used, as well as helps the fret slide out easily.

Then I use my end-ground nippers to pull it out.

I repeat this process all the way down the neck.

Now they are all out. The tang on the upper frets had been expanded, which led to some chipping when they were pulled. I immediately used CA glue to replace any chips that came off.  Then, I used a long flat sanding block to re-level the fretboard. I sanded the ebony board up to 320 grit, taking care to retain the original fretboard radius. I was also careful not to sand too much wood away.
With a level board, I was ready to install the new frets, which I hammered in. Once they were all in, I used my nippers again to cut them flush to the board.

Then I used my fret file to bevel the edges.

These frets came out very level, and only needed a light touch with the stone to ensure a flat playing surface. Then I used sandpaper, starting with 320 and working up to about a 1000 grit, to polish and round the frets.

Final treatment is oiling the fretboard and then polishing everything with Meguire’s #7 polish.  The owner of this guitar was ecstatic to have it back, whole again, and ready to rock!