My guitar

[maldoror]

My guitar is broken, and I wan't to play it. What is wrong is that one of the screws on the back of the headstock holding in the High E tuner has stripped its hole and won't be screwed back in, with the result that I can't tune the string up to E properly. I fixed before with wood filler and it came out. Since it's a cheap guitar, I'm wondering if it's a good idea to just epoxy the tuner in place, because I don't think filler will work again and I don't have money for a new guitar right now (I'm actually engaged in buying a double bass, but I'd prefer to have both). Is this a good idea?

[Scrapheap]

can you drill the hole oversized and fill it with a piece of wooden dowel??

[maldoror]

can you drill the hole oversized and fill it with a piece of wooden dowel??

Hey, there's an idea. It would be delicate work, though.

[DirtDawg]

can you drill the hole oversized and fill it with a piece of wooden dowel??

Hey, there's an idea. It would be delicate work, though.

Scr'eap's got it.
That's what we do. You don't even really need to drill it out much, but the important thing is to use a tiny sliver of HARDWOOD dowel, then re-drill your repair, before you put the screw back in. I would get a small bottle of fresh, "tan" aliphatic resin wood glue, rather than using some old Elmer's Glue you may have sitting around or an epoxy.

[maldoror]

Cool, the glue was going to be my next question. Yeah, looking at it now I don't think the epoxy would have worked.

[Rabbit From Hell]

Is there any reason your username is in hebrew?  The latinized version of my username is 'Hinata', the girl in my avatar.

[DirtDawg]

Epoxy is great stuff, but it's not the best for wood. For high strength, you would need a huge glob, almost encasing the tuning head, if you used the typical epoxy you can get in little tubes.

[maldoror]

Epoxy is great stuff, but it's not the best for wood. For high strength, you would need a huge glob, almost encasing the tuning head, if you used the typical epoxy you can get in little tubes.

Epoxy is my instinctual solution to everything, but half the time the shit ends up breaking again.

I changed my handle to Hebrew because I realized you could use different alphabets and I was bored of looking at it in Latin. Besides, Maldoror sounds Hebrew. I'll probably change it to a different alphabet at some point just to keep people on their toes.

[ASpHole]

My guitar is broken, and I wan't to play it. What is wrong is that one of the screws on the back of the headstock holding in the High E tuner has stripped its hole and won't be screwed back in, with the result that I can't tune the string up to E properly. I fixed before with wood filler and it came out. Since it's a cheap guitar, I'm wondering if it's a good idea to just epoxy the tuner in place, because I don't think filler will work again and I don't have money for a new guitar right now (I'm actually engaged in buying a double bass, but I'd prefer to have both). Is this a good idea?

You should l look around for machine heads that have a different setscrew pattern and retrofit your headstock with those. Kluson style machines would probably work well with Schaller or Grover style machines.  I know that the Schaller Mini's used to have a pin that you either had to drill out a shallow hole for, (On headstocks made of hard wood such as Rock Maple)   or would simply just sink into softer woods such as Mahogany. --You may be able to get away with replacing the damaged tuning machine, and continue using the rest of the others.

Barring that, what type of wood filler did you use? Try filling the stripped screwhole with epoxy, then sand the cured epoxy till the spot is flush with the headstock, and redrill the hole through the epoxy, reset the tuner, and continue playing. --Bear in mind though that Epoxy can sometimes be difficult to mix properly.