P'Mico 'Collegiate' Soprano Ukulele Neck Repair

A couple weeks ago a friend mentioned he had  just procured a P'Mico "Collegiate" soprano ukulele. The neck was pulling away from the body, and it also had a serious case of fret sprout.

So I set about to do those repairs on it, squeezing it in around the new workbench project. Instrument work always comes first!

Here it is on the bench...the old bench, which I suppose now needs a name.

P'Mico stands for "Progressive Musical Instrument Company." They were a 'jobber' - that is, a distributor of instruments and accessories from the 1920s through 1940s I believe.

P'Mico was in New York City. They didn't make instruments; they put their name on instruments made by other companies. I suspect these were made by the one or more of the big Chicago firms - namely Regal or Kay. I don't know if anyone has any definitive answers on that score.

You may recall the 'Nobilty' P'Mico tenor guitar that crossed my bench a while back.

This little uku is cute. As with the tenor guitar, there are some interesting features. The body appears to be shaded mahogany, but...well, we'll see more in a minute.

Here's the back. You can see a crack on the top bout area. It was previously repaired, as were a few other cracks I discovered. Which tells me that someone did use it, a good thing I think.

The label and the rosette. The rosette is a decal.

The 'Collegiate' name on the headstock. Rah rah! Go ukulele, go!

More previous repair work.

The repairs are solid, but I wish I could have had a crack (ha ha) at them. I think I could have made them a bit less obvious.

Anyway, this is the main repair I'm undertaking

There's separation at the bottom of the neck joint under string pull. I'll remove the neck and reglue it.

When you have this kind of issue (gap at the bottom), it generally is a hint that the neck is attached with a dowel, instead of having a dovetail. So I'm assuming that's the case and will proceed accordingly. (Sheesh, that sounds like it's rocket surgery).

There isn't any fretboard extension - the neck meets right at the body and the topmost fret is right there on the joint.

Heated up the fret as usual with a soldering iron.

And pulled it out with fret pullers. 

And also marked the 'treble' side with a felt marker so as to put it back in exactly the same way.

You can see the neck joint some here. There is actually a little chamfer on the fingerboard - the chamfer along with the body's edge comprise the fret 'slot.'

Now I pondered how best to approach getting the neck off. I figured that injecting steam as you would on a dovetail would be hard to control. I envisioned steam going everywhere and wrecking the finish.

Then it hit me: hot knife.

I heated up one of my disassembly/removal spatulas in my trusty Sunbeam hot pot and went at it.

Here we have the heated spatula going into the joint. Oh yes.

It took five or six patient cycles of heat, press into joint, heat, etc., to get it opened up.

Note I have tape over the neck and body to protect it.

Soon enough I was able to gently slide the neck away from the body by pulling a twisting it.

And now we can see the dowel that holds it together.

Voila! The neck is separated from the body.

And, we see that the neck and body woods are what appears to be birch stained to look like mahogany.

This is pretty typical for this time period on inexpensive instruments. A good way to use a decent wood but make it appear to be made of something a bit more expensive.

I have a May-Bell tenor guitar made of birch as well waiting in my queue. Stained in a similar way.

Unfortunately, the stained finish means that even looking at it wrong will make it chip or scrape, especially after 80 years!

When I was first examining the uku, I discovered this split in one of the back braces that needs to be repaired.

I'm holding it open here with a small screwdriver to get glue in there - it goes about halfway through the brace horizontally.

I already have a piece of waxed paper over the label to protect it from drops of glue.

Do a dry run, then get some Titebond in a Stew-Mac pipette (those things are gold). Note I cut the tip off to get a bigger opening.

I had a couple of cauls ready to hold the brace down after gluing. Really hard to get those things inside a small instrument!

Here they are in place, wedged between the top and the brace. I always wonder how long these things have been this way...decades?

Most of the squeeze-out is gone in this shot, but you see couple of spots remaining here. I used a small screwdriver to get at them.

Now to glue the neck back on.

Surely I have a caul in my Box O' Homebrew Cauls I can use on the heel when I clamp it back together?

I found nothing, so I cooked up a quick caul with a 'V' cutout and lined with cork.

Here's a test run using the new caul. The uku is held in my fabulous guitar repair vise. I have a long clamp holding the neck in place.

The new caul doesn't put enough pressure on the top of the joint at the body- there is a small gap there. Maybe just 1/64th of an inch, but I can flex it closed, so I'm not happy with this arrangement. I want the joint to be tight.

Clearly I need a deeper caul. I roughly sketch the heel shape on a pine block, then hop over to the bandsaw (ok, I actually walked...) and cut out a deep V.

Then I glued a back piece onto the block.

Chiseled the V to better follow the shape of the neck heel.

Fine woodworking this is not.

And finally line the new custom caul with cork.

Looks like a little recliner for the heel!

I wound up clamping the caul to the heel so it would stay in place and provide enough leverage under clamping pressure to draw the heel snug to the body.

Put some Titebond on the face of the neck joint and the dowel.

And clamp it all up.

Note the second rectangular caul on the bottom. Don't clamp pieces together without cauls - and use some sort of pad on the cauls to protect the instrument. You see that I like cork - it soft, won't scratch, and has some 'give' to it.

Here's the neck joint under clamping pressure. Glue squeeze-out is our friend, but we do need to clean it up right away.

That heel caul looks huge in the picture! Note the joint there - where the two pieces were glued together.

It sits a lot higher on the heel than the first attempt, which lets me get the neck right up against the body.

After the neck repair dries, I need to touch up the light colored wood at the neck/body joint. It was visible before, but now it's really obvious. There are also some finish chips as well - I'm not sure if I did them or they were already there. Probably a little of each.

I used Minwax 'Red Mahogany' stain to touch everything up. The hardest thing to do on this kind of touchup work is matching the finish. I don't let it drive me nuts like it used to - I get as close as possible and live with it.

The only way you'll get it perfect is to refinish the whole thing.

This is pretty good I think. We want to make the work less obvious and I think this does it.

Now on to the fret sprout.

I tried to get the best shot I could of the fret ends. This is beyond sprout - it's protrusion! I'd guess some of the ends are about 1/32 of an inch past the end of the fingerboard. Hopefully you can see they really stick out.

Ouch! Like playing with barbed wire on there.

Note the finish on the frets - either the fingerboard was refinished at some point or that's the way it was originally. I vote for the latter.

I used thin CA (superglue) to put the removed fret back on. It fit pretty tightly in the slot, but I wanted to ensure it would stay in place.

I put some accelerator on the fret, then ran the CA into the slot and put it in place. Note the tape for protection - that glue is water thin and wants to spread everywhere.

I love my Stew-Mac neck supports. I keep showing them in hopes the Stew-Mac folks will give me some kind of endorsement deal! So far, no luck.

I'm approaching this as you would if you had just done a refret.

I take my fret bevel file and have at it.

The file gets most of the excess off, and puts a nice 30 degree bevel on the fret ends.

After beveling, I take any remaining sharp edges off as usual with regular fret files.

The final step is to run over the fret ends with 150 and 400 grit Fret Erasers.

I always wonder they they call them 'Fret Erasers.' They don't erase the frets, they just make them smooth. Hmmm.

(There goes my endorsement deal for questioning the name 'Fret Erasers!')

Here are the fret ends. Smooth as the bottom of a baby.

The process did take some of that fragile finish off...and I touched it up.

Here's the little Collegiate ready to go out and beat its rivals!

It's surprisingly loud for a soprano and sounds pretty darn good. My friend has Aquila Red Series strings on it and I suspect that's a big factor.