HELP!!!!! Massive cock up!.

poopot

Whilst fitting the tuner to my lovely new rosewood neck, I have managed to shear two screws off in the decking headstock....

how do do I get these out peeps?

http://a63.tinypic.com/24dr6g4.jpg

http://a68.tinypic.com/103h1tx.jpg

paulnb57

What an utter bastard! I bet you are gutted!

Can you get hold of them at all? If you can, heat the bit that protrudes with a soldering iron, give it plenty of heat then grip with long nose pliers or similar, the heat should help loosen the screw.....
If not there are special tools available like a tiny hole saw that will cut all round the broken screw allowing removal, then the hole is filled with a wooden plug and redrilled....I dont know the correct name for the tool, someone will be along soon who does...
I did the same fitting a string tree to a Birds eye Maple headstock, made a mess of it, totally gutted...now when I drill for tuer screws etc I drill almost too big for the screw, as they are so soft.....

poopot

paulnb57 said:

What an utter bastard! I bet you are gutted!

Can you get hold of them at all? If you can, heat the bit that protrudes with a soldering iron, give it plenty of heat then grip with long nose pliers or similar, the heat should help loosen the screw.....
If not there are special tools available like a tiny hole saw that will cut all round the broken screw allowing removal, then the hole is filled with a wooden plug and redrilled....I dont know the correct name for the tool, someone will be along soon who does...
I did the same fitting a string tree to a Birds eye Maple headstock, made a mess of it, totally gutted...now when I drill for tuer screws etc I drill almost too big for the screw, as they are so soft.....

Believe it or not they are out!....

drilled a 1mm hole next to the screw and it gave enough room to get a pair of strong tweezers in there!... the extra hole is about 3mm deep and has now been filled with some rosewood dust and superglue!...

but yes... at the time my world came crashing to a grinding halt!.

paulnb57

Well done, great save!

DartmoorHedgehog

Good that you managed to get them out.  A bit of candle wax on the screw thread helps to make them go in a bit more easily and less likely to snap when using small screws made of cheese.

Ravenous

DartmoorHedgehog said:

Good that you managed to get them out.  A bit of candle wax on the screw thread helps to make them go in a bit more easily and less likely to snap when using small screws made of cheese.

Yeah the candle wax on all screws into hardwood is well worth doing. (Or if like most of us you don't have candles, use a dry bar of soap to scratch some flakes onto the threads.)

Sarge

If you have a female partner and you reside within 200 miles of Ikea then you have candles, hundreds and hundreds of bloody candles

GloopyJon

Funnily enough, I did exactly the same thing this evening!  One of the screws broke while I was fitting the tuners onto a bass that I'm currently building.  I dug the screw out; fortunately, the mess that I made doesn't matter because I have to add an extra veneer onto the back of the headstock anyway, because I made it too thin.  And I'd put some wax on the screw before screwing it in too.  I hate cheap screws with a vengeance!

I'm probably going to buy a set of drill bits going in 0.1mm increments in the near future, so that I can get a really precise fit for the hole.  You can buy a set going from 1mm to 6mm quite cheaply on Amazon, for about £25, and that seems to be worth a try.

TTony

GloopyJon said:

 I hate cheap screws with a vengeance!

Wait until you try cheap drill bits!

GloopyJon said:

You can buy a set going from 1mm to 6mm quite cheaply on Amazon, for about £25

Ahhhhh ...

NeilMcG

GloopyJon said:

Funnily enough, I did exactly the same thing this evening!  One of the screws broke while I was fitting the tuners onto a bass that I'm currently building.  I dug the screw out; fortunately, the mess that I made doesn't matter because I have to add an extra veneer onto the back of the headstock anyway, because I made it too thin.  And I'd put some wax on the screw before screwing it in too.  I hate cheap screws with a vengeance!

I'm probably going to buy a set of drill bits going in 0.1mm increments in the near future, so that I can get a really precise fit for the hole.  You can buy a set going from 1mm to 6mm quite cheaply on Amazon, for about £25, and that seems to be worth a try.

Try this place https://www.ukdrills.com/hss-drill . They are cheap and have 0.1 increment metric and imperial sizes. I got a range of sizes to drill precise pilot holes from there a while back.

djspecialist

Did anyone else chortle at the fact that, scrolling down Recent Discussions on the mobile, the first two lines in the title of this one are

HELP !!!!!
Massive cock

No?

Nobody?

Just me then.

GoldenEraGuitars

Glad you got sorted! That’s a nasty one when that happens.

And hello @GloopyJon

poopot

What really pissed me off was, I went and spent £40 on a decent set of 1mm-10mm drill bits for this build... drill the pilot holes to the exact diameter needed... waxed the screws... one snapped going in and as I was taking the rest off the other snapped...

Curiously it was the two screws at either end of the run of tuners!.

GloopyJon

lonestar said:

Glad you got sorted! That’s a nasty one when that happens.

And hello @GloopyJon

Wotcher dude, hope all is well with you!

GoldenEraGuitars

GloopyJon said:

lonestar said:

Glad you got sorted! That’s a nasty one when that happens.

And hello @GloopyJon

Wotcher dude, hope all is well with you!

All is smashing Jonathon. New workshop nearly sorted and a massive lot of orders to plough through! You’ll need to show off some of your builds off around here. You’re still doing that?

GloopyJon

lonestar said:

GloopyJon said:

lonestar said:

Glad you got sorted! That’s a nasty one when that happens.

And hello @GloopyJon

Wotcher dude, hope all is well with you!

All is smashing Jonathon. New workshop nearly sorted and a massive lot of orders to plough through! You’ll need to show off some of your builds off around here. You’re still doing that?

Yes, I have pictures on my website, www.gloopyguitars.com.  I had a busy day today working on another guitar that isn't on there yet - it's going to be a tele shape but with les paul-style electronics and a flame maple top.  It'll be my first time trying to stain flame maple, so I'm looking forward to that!

Glad to hear that your business is going well too!

GoldenEraGuitars

GloopyJon said:

lonestar said:

GloopyJon said:

lonestar said:

Glad you got sorted! That’s a nasty one when that happens.

And hello @GloopyJon

Wotcher dude, hope all is well with you!

All is smashing Jonathon. New workshop nearly sorted and a massive lot of orders to plough through! You’ll need to show off some of your builds off around here. You’re still doing that?

Yes, I have pictures on my website, www.gloopyguitars.com.  I had a busy day today working on another guitar that isn't on there yet - it's going to be a tele shape but with les paul-style electronics and a flame maple top.  It'll be my first time trying to stain flame maple, so I'm looking forward to that!

Glad to hear that your business is going well too!

Excellent, I’ll take a look later on. The staining sounds intriguing. I remember watching  a PRS factory tour episode on YouTube, the guys were applying the stains and it was just incredible watching the maple come to life. 

Its going well yeah, hard work and very much living day to day. Hopefully it’ll be worth it in the end