Truss Rod Rescue Kit
V-5680
Dan Erlewine shows two truss rod troubles that are solved with the Truss Rod Rescue Tools.
UPDATE: The Truss Rod Rescue Tools have been improved as of November 2017!
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Truss Rod Rescue Kit]
Dan Erlewine: This truss rod tool has two jobs in my shop. One's an easy one and one's a little more difficult. Here's the easy one.
Clean-up marred threads
We need to clean up three or four threads that got marred here. Let's see if a close-up will show you what this looks like. If you look up at the end of the rod, these threads, three or four of them, are marred and dinged up. Way back here, by the wall, they're clean, and the nut came off a little tough to be honest.
I'm just going to run the die onto the thread. It'll catch and get a feel for it and start threading on, and this is called chasing. If you have rust, paint or dirt, it'll take that off too, and cleans up the thread so you get a fresh start. I don't know if you can see it in this picture or not, but those threads are sharper now and that nut will go right on. It solved that problem in a hurry. That's how they should work.
Rethread a broken truss rod
Now here's the tough job and the reason this tool was originally designed. There's a broken truss rod in there and I'm going to take that die cutter, this is the thread cutter that we just used to chase the threads, and I'm going to replace that with this tooth cutter. It's wickedly sharp. And that's going to go in there and cut around the rod and remove wood, so that I can get my die in there and cut new threads. I slide over that rod and put a lot of pressure on it and start cutting down into the neck. Once I'm in there, I'm going to stop and clean the teeth. You have to do that often. Imagine if this was your own neck and it was broken, and you'd never have that guitar again if you couldn't do this. You'd have to pull off the fretboard, pull out the truss rod, make a new one, put the fret board back on, paint it. That's a huge job.
I've cut about five sixteenths of an inch, maybe a little bit more than that deep, I can't really tell. And that's enough space to slide this metal washer on. That will be what the truss rod nut's going to bear against. But first I'm going to sharpen up the existing threads and cut a few more because I can see where the thread runs out and hits metal. Right now I'm just threading onto the old threads. When it comes to a stop, then I'll be cutting new thread, right there. Here's the truss rod nut. Threads right on, nice and smooth. This neck is fixed. It's adjustable again.
You get the 10-32 die, steel washers for the first four jobs, seven sixteenths diameter boring tool, and a brass index plug. The brass plug goes into the boring tool and lets you guide on a three eighths diameter hole of a fender neck with a broken truss rod.
