The first thing I did was remove the sticker from the front, then give the face and edges a rough sand to remove the scuff sheet and sticker residue. This gave me a smooth area to work with flowing the removal of the scuff sheet and made it easier to see what I was doing with the glue.
The main area I needed to address was obviously the split that went up the face from the toe. I opened this up to see how far the damage extended.
Once the damaged area was open I got plenty of high quality PVA glue in there. As you can see from this picture there are a few cracks on the face which may be delamination. I'll address this later.
Once I was satisfied there was plenty of glue in the damaged area, I used some cheap fibreglass tape to pull the wood into the correct place and hold it there while the glue dries.
This may be a rather crude way of "clamping" the willow it is a method I've had success with in the past. This is also absolutely terrible tape, that tore or split on impact with a cricket ball. As such I won't be using it on any bats so this seemed a good use for it!
I will now leave the glue to dry overnight, and if we have a dry day tomorrow I should hopefully be able to get the refurb finished.
Watch this thread for updates