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Hey everyone,
So I just bought this lovely parlor guitar on Ebay today for 42 dollars. It is a two tone sunburst that says "Baron" on the headstock. Anyone know anything about the maker? All I know is that it was likely made between 1937 to 1940. It has some of the laminate on the sides separating but I think I have a trick up my sleeve to repair that, we'll see when it arrives. The tuners are Klusons that, and I quote the seller, are "rusted to hell", but I'm not too worried about that, I am an avid restorer of antique hand planes and I know practically every rust removal technique out there. I think I will remove the rust by soaking them in simple green and getting it off with a toothbrush and 0000 steel wool, this will remove active rust but keep patina. Here are the pics.

That's got the looks of a harmony made guitar.

No laminates in that one - they were made out of solid knife cut birch.

Look inside to find a couple numbers. There's usually a date code with a F or S in front of a 2 digit number... The 2 digits are the year. So a 53=1953.

Then there's usually another number code with either a 3 or 4 digit number. That's the model #. Example -H929 is a model 929.

thanks for the info! I shall do further inspection when it arrives at my door on the 28th. The birch thing is good to know, but I actually do think it may be a 2 piece laminate, as the Ebay listing has a picture of some peeling near the neck. sorry about the image quality, that's the seller not me ! I have been asking around on some other forums too and some people have told me that it actually is not from the 40s but 50s to 60s. What do you make of that?

Interesting. Most likely it's not as old as you think.

It's not Russian, so the laminate construction would make it a Kay. The headstock design is a dead wringer for the old Stella

Kay pioneered large scale laminate construction of musical instruments. They did this in the early 1960's. It was marketed as their "Crack free" designs.

Poke around for old Kay catalogs online and you will probably be able to sort out the correct model.

clearly not as crack free as they claimed it would be , I've been looking through catalogs and have been turning up blanks.

Just try to find something that matches the body shape and tailpiece.

You know that thing is bottom of the barrel - even the pick guard is stenciled on....

The last option Miscellaneous early Japanese or Taiwanese made. These started appearing in the early 70's.

Hints are:
Laminate that frequently has Asian mahogany (Luan) interior layers. The American and European laminates were usually birch.
Mahogany (Luan) neck instead of birch or poplar
They frequently have Mahogany (Luan) bracing with a laminate bridge plate
The "linings" may even be laminate.
Plywood fretboard with cheap brass frets.
Sometimes made with a blobby white rice glue rather than brown animal glue.

yeah, the pickguard is painted on, I will probably make a real one for it. As for the neck, it has this weird bolt on joint, what I am going to do about that is add a heel to it and turn it into a dovetailed bolt on because I 100 percent do not trust the neck joint as it is.