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Hello all, here is my latest project.

My good friend bought a guitar for 3$ in a yard sale. He bargained it from 5$.
That's pretty much what it's worth.

It's been stripped off of its hardware, bridge and fingerboard, and rather crudely.





That's an interesting pin-up decal. Someone seems to have scraped it with a screwdriver.


The back is falling off the guitar. Looks like humidity damage.




But the neck seems to have been played a lot, which is a good sign.




So my plan is to restore that thing to its past glory and to give it a chance to live another couple of decades without falling apart.
It's not worth much, so I'll not put up much money into it.

Hope you like it.

After removing the back, we see the ladder bracing pattern with the big spruce bridge patch that got eaten through by string balls.
Also, I was surprised to see that this guitar is made of solid, not laminated wood. Spruce top with maple back and sides.





Removing the back also allowed to see why that guitar once became unplayable.
That neck block is split side to side.


So I drilled it off.

I made an ebony patch for the bridge pins/string balls.
I added some longitudinal bracing above the bridge location and around the soundhole.
It's really rather small and will hopefully prevent the potato chip deformation ladder braced guitars sometimes develop, without choking the top too much.
I also cleated the centre joint behind the bridge.
You can see I also replaced the neck block with a birch ply one.






Having the longitudinal braces allowed me to shave the other braces a good bit to reduce top mass, especially around the top perimeter.
This is in progress.


Which gives this.

You can see the back braces have come unglued sometime in the past.


So I removed them and reglued them cleanly.


This is while sanding the rim to radius.


And the back is getting glued back on.


The back has no binding, so regluing it left it standing slightly proud at some places, so I had to scrape it a bit and play around with felt tip brown/yellow/red/black pen to camouflage this.






And working some patina back in there also.

Working on the neck.
I routed a truss rod slot, added a maple dowel in the heel to support two brass inserts to convert the neck to a bolt-on.


This is the neck block after routing and drilling.


Tapping the frets in a preslotted and radiused ebony fretboard from LMI.


Gluing the fretboard after dropping a light silicone bed for the truss rod to lay in.


And filing the frets flat and then after crowning and polishing.

The neck angle is a bit off.


Getting it right.


This is the new bridge outline compared to the old one. Hopefully the extra surface will be enough to compensate for the irregular gluing surface the violent removal of the old bridge left.
I messed up a bit by filling the old holes with sawdust and black CA... It was thin enough to wick a bit but not outside the bridge outline.


I used some chalk to mark contact points between the bridge underside and the top. After about an hour or so of marking and scraping, I got a pretty good fit.


Getting the bridge glued on. I was stupid enough to buy just two of these clamps, so I use screws to "clamp" the middle of the bridge. It works surprisingly well, considering it bites in the ebony patch underneath and pulls everything together.

That's a beautiful project going on there.

I am glad to see you are making the most of modern technology (bolt on neck, radius the back, radiused fretboard, proper bridge placement for good intonation, etc). That makes these old guitars so much more fun to play.

Thanks

Thanks John!

After gluing the bridge comes some aesthetic touch ups.

I cleaned and repolished the pickguard.
From that:


To that:



And used again child felt tip pen to hide some scratches. Please note the weird decal involving a sombrero and a cactus.


I refurbished some old cheap tuners I had laying around.


After removing the casing and oiling them up, I dulled the finish on them like that:


After shaping the nut, the string layout.

And here is the completed guitar:

This is a short video of my friend having his guitar back.
Should be good for another 72 years or so!
Thanks for watching.

You did a very thorough job and it is better than new - well done. How does it sound?

Ed

Very nice. Your friend is very lucky.

These are so much fun to do. I've done a dozen Harmony re-dos and they always amaze me when done. Try converting your next one to x-brace, makes them sound great.

_________________
"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

Nice job.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

That's worth a bit more than $3 now - good job!

_________________
John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

I disagree. I think the latter bracing is what gives these guitars their unique sound. X bracing would rob this kind of guitar of all of its character. If you want X braces, get a Martin or a Martin knockoff. These guitars do something completely different. You can't get a good guitar to sound as good as one of these.

My hat's off to Johnny for making a guitar that was hardly worth fixing into a player. Way to go man!