Bending tailpiece - 4 years on

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:44 am

Philip,Peter,& Tom e mail sent hope you get them.

ram · Post by **ram** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:24 am

Received here - Thanks!

anoukane · Post by **anoukane** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:13 am

Me too! Thanks!

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:37 pm

Philip - that is not as bad as Gary had, but about twice what mine was. All I did was bolt my tailpiece to a board through the holes the mute screws go through, then used two clamps like the pic below to slowly bring it down to close to flat. It will take a week or so. Just brute force.

Once almost flat (1/8" still up IIRC) I then used the template and drilled holes in the tailpiece, countersunk, went to a local hardware store with one of the tailpiece mount screws and bought a few more stainless steel ones the same size (again, IIRC - use your judgement to make sure the screw won't go through the body!). I then mounted the tailpiece, clamped it down to the body using rubber pads against the maple so as not to mar it, and drilled the two holes with a slightly undersized drill I had put a masking tape "stopper" band around so as not to drill through the body, and then ran the screws in all the way tight. Solid now. Use black nail polish to touch up where you drill and countersink so it looks good.

You should have seen the looks I got buying three different black nail polishes from the counter girl at Walgreens!

I used the Hard As Nails one as it looked almost identical to the black powder coat of the tailpiece when it dried.

Oh, and I used washers between the maple and tailpiece where the 3 screws go in the low rout area to fill in the void and not have those three screws pulling the tailpiece down there and lifting the end.

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:40 pm

Forgot the clamp pic!

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:55 pm

Powdercoated fingernails--a new paradigm.

jps · Post by **jps** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:44 pm

Thanks, Peter, I got it now!

anoukane · Post by **anoukane** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 1:26 am

Thanks for the explanation John.
I don't have a clamp like the one on that picture.

What do you reckon, will this old fella work as well?

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:28 am

I would try to find the other, but if you use that one, go SLOW and use padding so as not to scar the tailpiece.

anoukane · Post by **anoukane** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:55 am

The gap is reduced to about 3mm

So it worked really well. Perhaps I could bend it even more flat, but I'm happy with the result

Thanks for your time John and thanks to all the people on rickresource!

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 1:03 pm

Great, Philip! But Gary gets the thanks, not me. I'm just the messenger - it was Gary Clausen's procedure we both followed and had success with.

Being it is a black tailpiece, keep an eye on it for more lifting as they are prone to bend up easier than the chromed ones. Don't know why. If it starts to move, consider drilling it.