Rebuilding a destroyed Walden acoustic

Sometimes you might assume that a guitar is destroyed beyond repair, or at least beyond its actual value.  This one seemed to be "totalled" at first sight, but actually turned out to be a borderline case.  It's a Walden D550, which is a Chinese-made solid-top guitar that is well-built, but this one met with an unfortunate accident.  The neck was broken completely off and in the process was split all the way up to the headstock.  The guitar has a bolt-on neck similar to Seagulls, and the heel was broken apart and the metal inserts for the bolts had broken free.  This guitar was about $300 new, so the customer assumed that it would not be worth fixing and gave the remnants to me to use as parts.  I took it in and stashed it away thinking I would find some use for the parts at some time (we luthiers can't throw anything away).  After some time, I happened to pick up the neck and started thinking that maybe it would be worth fixing after all.  In the end, I did end up getting it back in playing shape, although I would have charged the customer around $180 or so for this repair, so it wouldn't have made financial sense in this case.  But it does show that sometimes you might have a repair that you think is hopeless, but can actually be saved for a reasonable price.  It never hurts to ask.  By the way, as of this writing, it has been about 8 months since I fixed the Walden, and it is still in fine shape and sounding great.  It has been my "campfire" guitar that I can take places, and I don't have to worry about what happens to it.  Here's how the repair went.