Fixing neck dings - am I doing this right?

[Matthew Bryson]

I'm trying to fix several bad dings on a maple jazz bass neck. I had let it fall against drum kits twice before I realized I just can't lean my bass against the drums. It's a Geddy Lee Jazz with a glossy finished neck.

I have removed the neck and cleaned it to prep it for repair. I dropped gel super glue into the dings and let it dry completely. Then I masked around the fill areas to protect the neck as much as possible and carefully shaved off excess glue with a razor knife to minimize the amount of sanding I had to do. Then I sanded the repair areas smooth with 400 grit sand paper. This is where I'm at right now.

That went quite well IMO. I am going to do another round of filling with the super glue as there was some shrinkage, as I had expected there would be. A few of the dings are completely fixed, the rest are 95% of the way there and will probably just need one more round of fill. This part of the process is going quite well.

However, I do think it's quite possible that I may be leaving some bare wood around the areas I'm repairing. I don't know if I'm down to bare wood just yet. As I mentioned above, I'm masking around these fill areas to minimize the amount of original finish area I am effecting, but at this stage in the game I can see having 3 to 4 spots where I may be down to bare wood or close to it. Each spot would be (much) less than 1 square inch.

Once this is complete - my plan is to mask off the neck at the binding and then scuff the entire back of the neck with 0000 steel wool to knock off the gloss and bring the whole thing to more of a satin finish.

How is my plan so far? Should I be concerned about a few small spots that may be lacking finish? Will that suck up moisture and warp the neck, or am I okay if 98% of the neck is covered with a finish and a couple of small spots may be bare. If you think it's important to patch the original finish over the dent repairs before doing the final scuff with steel wool, how would you recommend going about it? If you think I'm okay to just finish up smoothing out the repairs and then steel wool the whole thing, let me know that too as that's probably what I'll do unless advised otherwise.

Thanks for reading and for any and all tips!

[LM Bass]

Hi Matthew,

One tip for you is to try steaming out the dings.
You can use a piece of old T-shirt and an iron.
Get the cloth wet, put it on the ding, and apply the hot iron.
The steam will bring the wood fibers back out slowly.
You might have to apply it a few times, but it usually works like a charm.
best,
Laurence

[Matthew Bryson]

Laurence,

Thanks for mentioning this. I have heard of this technique and I did try steaming before moving on to filling the neck. It didn't work for me even though I did try several applications of the steam before giving up.

It may have been because these were some pretty nasty nicks or because the damage was about two years old before I ever attempted the steam.

At any rate, I've already started with filling the chips and nicks and that part is going well. I just need to know if any small bare wood spots will create a big problem in the long run.

[throbgod13]

just keep drop filling until you cover the entire area.. then level it out..

i wouldn't leave bare wood exposed.. not that it's going to really do anything.. but the bare wood will stain, and that's just it.. you'll have stains.. and bare spots..

just fill the dings.. level it.. scuff the finish down with a scotchbite pad until very dull.. then, reshoot the neck with clear..

you can select a satin clear poly and then matte it further if that's what you want..