Repairing the Headstock
Once the guitar arrived, We were pleased to find that the break looked pretty much as clean as it did in the eBay pictures, and the rest of the guitar was in fine shape. There was a small amount of wood missing from the bottom of the break, and some of the headstock top laminate missing from the top of the break, but the pieces fit together nicely. The break was actually mostly parallel to the original glue joint (it is often the case that a good glue joint is actually stronger than the surrounding wood) and not at the glue joint itself.
Break - top view
Break - bottom view
Another bonus was that one of the screws that holds the truss rod cover on was poking through the break, and would provide a convenient "locater pin" during the clamp up of the new glue joint. This was really helpful, as, without it, the clamps would have had the tendency to slide the headstock up the slanted break. The "pin" held the headstock in exactly the proper / original position while the glue dried.
View showing truss rod cover screw
We removed the tuners to allow the clamps to do their job, but left the truss rod cover, with its screw, in place.
Hardware removed
After slathering the joint with glue (regular Titebond wood glue), we clamped the two pieces together with three ratcheting clamps - tight enough for a nice fit, but not so tight as to force the pieces to slide. We then wiped the excess glue off with a damp rag as best we could.
Clamps in place
Clamps in place
At this point, it looked pretty promising...
Break looks pretty tight on this side
Once the glue dried and the clamps were removed, we could get a good look at the results. The joint looked nice and tight, and, just as importantly, it looked pretty strong. At some point, we would like to learn more about the cosmetic part of this process - covering up the missing chips, primarily to make them less visible - the missing piece of on the bottom of the neck is close enough to the headstock, that you do not feel it, even when playing basic chords down near the nut.
Cosmetics
Cosmetics
Cosmetics
Cosmetics
We decided to put it all back together for now to test the strength of the repair before worrying too much about the cosmetics. No sense in messing with that if the headstock is just going to pop back off once the strings are back on! ;-p
OK! We are ready for the reassembly... Buoyed by what appeard to be a successful repair, we went ahead and ordered a nice set of Seymour Duncen P-Rails to replace the stock Epiphone pickups.