Steaming out dents

[carfish7]

So, I cast my best Strat unceremoniously to the ground yesterday and put a couple good dents in the back of the neck. I know you can use a soldering iron and damp cloth to raise some dents in instruments by introducing heat/steam to the wood, but wonder how well this works with a dense wood like Maple? What about the poly finish?

I guess I could live with it but it is pretty noticeable under my hand. Any experience taking out dings in the back of a finished neck?

Thanks for any advice my HFC brethren.

[Steve Haynie]

The trick is getting the wood wet so that the steam will expand the wood. You can burn the wood quickly, too. Be careful. It is correct to assume that different wood density affects the success of heat and steam on removing a dent. Dented pine trim around a door or window is easiest to fix, and even if the dent does not completely come out at first just wait a day for it to finish returning to normal on its own. Mahogany is fairly easy to get out small dents. I have no experience with maple yet.

The finish will suffer under the heat. It will pick up the texture of the wet cloth or paper towel with a sort of halo around it, but the finish can be buffed down.

Heat will bring out some wood a little, but if you can get the wood wet it is best. If the finish is not broken or gone, all the wet towel does is keeps you from burning a hole in the finish.

The best way to approach something like getting dings out of a finished guitar neck is to find a beater and practice on that guitar first.

[Mitch]

Never tried it on a finished guitar neck, but have had success on an unfinished maple pool cue shaft. Rather than using a soldering iron, I went the pot of boiling water covered w/ tin foil vented with a pin hole route. Works well.

One dent in particular I thought was going to be hopeless, but shazam, out it went.

[mc2]

Now I know why none of the guitars they found laying in the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had any dents in the wood.

After soaking in the floodwaters for a month and then baking in the 100 degree heat and crazy humidity once the water resceded, they'd been "Cajunized."

[Caddie]

Cajunized!!! Thats beautiful ! Copyright it before Fender adds it their list of Custom Shop finishes. Then you can just sit back and cash the royalty checks baby!

Cheers

caddie

[Toadroller]

Cajunized... is that like baked maple?