Saving Private Corlett

[Dani]

As they say not every thing goes the way it was planed, but at lease the customer didn’t see this one. Yes, Joe broke a top and broke it good. I talked him in using my seam alignment blocks to keep every thing flat. Here are the repair photos, I will let him explain, he types mush faster than I.

Dani

[Joe Corlett]

All:

My trailer's a bit bouncy, so this job was blocked and screwed into the trailer perfectly. It's the afternoon before install, so I decide to run to the store to pick up some grease for my wheelbearings, always thinking ahead.

When I get back to the shop, my "perfectly loaded" top has this gigundus crack. After I calm down, I realize how lucky I am. One, it's happened now when I've got time to fix it before the customer sees it and two, the color is Mystera Terrascape Prarie which has non-linear veining. With Integra White Linen adhesive, I couldn't have gotten a more forgiving color and pattern. There is no particulate.

The arc broke cleanly, but that little bite on the end did not, it was only split. There is no way to get enough adhesive into the split, so we jigsawed through the single-stack edge, put 'er on the bench and finished the break. That's always hairy, you never really know what may happen. I like excitement.

The clamping and glue-up was uneventful, except the tad of contamination I got where a stand spanned the seam, despite a plastic release agent. Oh well, according to Dani, this Mystera looks like someone walked on it with dirty shoes anyway. I fillled the jigsaw kerf with a small piece.

I used 100% Acrylic seam supports at Dad's, oops, I mean Dani's insistence. This Mystera is a very soft and brittle polyester.

Two thirds of the repair was invisible, you could see a faint white line in the rest if you knew where to look. This was the luck of the break, not the quality of the repair. The last third of the break started running more parallell to the top, elongating the glue line.

This time I load the tools in the trailer and load the tops, well padded, into my hatchback. I make sure the homeowner never sees the bottom of the tops so I don't get any questions. Don't ask, don't tell.

I deposited his check on Wednesday morning and I haven't gottten a call-back yet. Keep your fingers crossed and hope that he dosen't read Geeks.

Joe

[lensmith]

Though I can't see the top up close, that looks like a pretty clean repair. Out of curiosity, how much less time did it take to repair the top compared to the time required to fabricate the top... i.e., was the repair 25% of the time it took to fab the top initially?

Good use of the Dani Clamps too!

[Joe Corlett]

Len:

25% is probably a good guess, give or take. From the time we took it off the trailer until it was ready to reload was probably two hours.

I'm so used to using Dani clamps and having them around for everything, I think I've become a bit spoiled. I can't imagine clamping this repair with bar clamps. What a nightmare. One could probably get Paralligns to work, but I'd have to buy or have another couple sets availaible. The two pods of my Gorillia Grips are fantastic on installs, but wouldn't be enough here.

Joe

[KarlC]

Nice one Joe, your right good thing that happend at the shop, must customer would not have went for that no matter how good it looked.

[Dani]

Karl,

Actually it was a very good repair. The only thing I would have done different than Joe would be to spend a little more time and custom tint the adhesive to match the deck. There was about a 6" long yellowish line at the top of the break that could be seen if you were looking for it. This was caused from a little wider bond line.

Here is a custom tint repair on a broken top. With the break splitting many of the particulate the repair line was easy to see. I took a small sharp chisel and chiseled out the split particulates and filled the holes with 3 different tint mixes. After the job was installed and the sink down light on it took me at lease 5 min to find the break and I knew where to look. My customer will never see this repair.

Dani

[KarlC]

Dani,
I hope you know I did not mean that what Joe did was not a good repair, I know Joe and you are both real craftsmen! All I ment was if most customers saw that break, more often then not they would want a new top. We repaired a LARGE conferance table once that had been droped down a flight of stairs, it ended up in about 100 peices. We told them they should buy a new one, they said "ALL of the big wigs will be here TOMARROW it has to get fixed today". We worked all night, when we where done no one could tell, some times you got to do what you got to do. Nice repair work guys!

[Dani]

Karl,

I knew what you meant, and you right no customer would buy that top if they knew what happen.
In the 21 years that I have been doing SS tops I have only had 2 that I had to repair after they were installed, and that was due to customer error. Although I will say there have been many tops that needed to be repaired before they went out the door, like remember to close the big door when it is real windy . Repairing tops, or should I say gluing them together is the easy part, it making the top look like it hasn’t been repaired that is the tricky part.
Do you have any repair photos?

Dani

[Joe Corlett]

All:

Dani's idea for a custom mixing works great when you have particulate but as I mentioned, Mystera Terrastone has none.

The only way to have further disguised the elongated glue line would have been to rout it out and insert a new piece. This is a real crap shoot with tops with veining as this had.

I think we develop a more critical eye for these repairs and we're constantly raising the bar on ourselves. If the check clears and there are no call-backs, it's a good repair, everything else is academic.

Joe

[KarlC]

Dani, we take a few before and after photos of every job we do, so we have many 1000's of photos. I'd have to find some that my be of intrest, curently we have doing some pretty cool repairs on cracked and broken Granite. I'll post some when I get the time.

[fabwizard]

Joe,

Just a quick note. Polyesthers are actually harder that Acrylics. Thats not good or bad it's just so. That is why Acrylics are so ductile and forgiving to carry. Polyesthers on the other hand are harder and less flexible. Because of that they tend to sand more efficiently and finish out much faster. There are many desirable and less desirable characteristics to both products as well as the Hybrids. Its a game of pick what best meets the specific needs of the application. Some people think it's a matter of the Force against the Dark Side, not so. Learn to work with all and you'll master the shades of grey and open a lot more possibillities. By the way Great Repair!!

fabwizard