Junk shop acoustic refurbs (various)

[JB RETRO]

The great thing about this journey is in the end the guitar you've modified ends up better and you gain some great experience. Plus you get to share it with an "in House" audience. Looks terrific.

[Dedman]

I'll second JB's comments and try to stay out of Cashies LOL

[JohnH]

Thanks guys!

[JohnH]

After all the time I spent on that first guitar repair, I decided to tackle an easier one for the second. This 'Barclay' brand nylon string wasn't too beat up - it needed a new nut, and had some grime on the frets...





...and also a cracked headstock. I bought some little plastic pipettes and used them to squeeze Titebond into the cracks through the screw holes. Then clamped the buggery out of it for a day or two.



Then replaced the tuners with this pretty set I found on eBay. Not the highest quality, but they work fine and look nice.



It still needs a new nut, but I've been putting it off until I had a couple to do at once. There hasn't been any real rush - I don't play classical guitar at all, and when it's fixed I'll probably either give it away or sell it for the cost of the tuners on gumtree lol

[JohnH]

And this pretty much catches me up to where I'm at with my pile o' repairs. This is the parlour sized guitar I pulled from the skip at work. I'd been looking for another one - not because I wanted another parlour guitar, but because I wanted an octave mandolin (and my googling informed me that parlour-to-octave mando conversions were possible).

It was in a terrible state when I found it. Three cracks on the front of the body, each about two inches long, plus one huge crack that ran two-thirds the length of the back. The bracing was coming away from the back too, and the tuners were missing knobs. The previous owner had carved some 'art' into the surface, and it was dusty and manky as f***. All of this on top of the fact that it was a pretty cheap and nasty instrument to begin with.

[JohnH]

The first thing I did was strip as much of the finish off as I could off the front, so I could see how bad the cracks and the carving were going to be to fix and refinish. Again, paint stripper plus sanding + elbow grease.





Then threw some Timbermate into the 'art'...

[JohnH]

I decided that the back was unsalvageable, at least with my minimal skill level. The crack was so long and wide, and it had created a really significant warp in the back plate. I'm really glad I tried pulling the back off this before I ever had a go at a guitar I cared about, because I did a god awful job (even though I was being super careful)





The label...



A few shots of the inside. There is glue just about everywhere, so I spent some time scraping it back. I didn't get much done; it was taking forever, and I lost interest.

[JohnH]

And that was were I left it. It must have been about four years since I put all of these into storage - we moved house a few times in a few years, and then had kids.

Anyway, now the kids are getting a little bigger and I have a bit more time to dedicate to these things, I've pulled them all back out.

I spent an hour or so today going back around the body of this guitar, trying to sand off as much of the previous finish as I could. It needs another go over, and the neck is only 80% stripped, but it's getting there.



The list of jobs now goes something like this:

- Buy wood to replace the back
- Bookmatch, plane, cut, and glue the new back (and new back braces, which I already have the timber for)
- Plug all the existing screw and tuner holes
- Extend the two cavities in the headstock to accommodate the extra length of a set of mandolin tuners
- Re-drill the tuner holes, for a set of mandolin tuners (which I also already have)
- Remove the fretboard
- Make a new fretboard (keen to try a wood alternative, such as this)
- Cut binding and rosette channels (and also fix the sound hole so it's actually round lol)
- Install binding and rosette (I already bought these too - I'm going to try to bind it in wood, but also have some plastic binding kicking around as a fallback)
- Re-stain
- Finish
- Install hardware, etc...

[robin]

Inspirational stuff John. The finished one looks great.

I know I lack the skill to make an acoustic guitar, but you have got me thinking outside the box now.

Looking forward to see how they all progress.

rob

[WeirdBits]

For those inspired and looking for a project next Wednesday...