Jump to content

Performing the worlds slowest autopsy on my old guitar


kwakatak

Recommended Posts

  • Members

If you recall, I muffed steaming the neck off and pulverized the heel in a bout of drunken lutherie. Turns out it's a but joint. Who knew?

 

Regardless, there was clearly a cracked brace underneath as well so in the interests of science I decided to try my hand at removing the top while trying to preserve the rims. I carefully routed inside the purfling and left the binding intact and without too much fuss I had the top removed almost entirely intact. Here's what I found that essentially made it a moot point to fix the old thing:

 

1: as suspected, the lower arm of the treble side X brace had a nice crack about 6" long starting from the lap joint toward the rim.

2: the glue joint on the underside of the other half of the same brace (the part up by the soundhole) had COMPLETELY failed, meaning that it was no longer attached to the soundboard .

3: the bridge plate - which BTW is spruce, not maple and it's well oversized - was also coming unglued but oddly not cracked along the grain from the ball ends.

 

I should also note that this guitar was grossly overbraced otherwise. They had no taper apart from a slight 1" long scoop down to about 1/8" where they were inlet into the ribbed lining. The profile still had a lot of mass too; essentially they were just rounded off but not chiseled or scalloped whatsoever. OTOH that's probably a good thing because it had been scalloped with a triangular profile the guitar would have imploded 25 years ago.

 

One other thing. Apparently it also served as a boat sometime in its life. The interior of the guitar is moldy with evidence of being waterlogged at one time.

 

To think that once upon a time I sang the praises of this guitar. I'll try and take pictures when I can get good natural light.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It ain't haunting me, BigAl. I view it as a cadaver now that is instructing me on what to do with upcoming builds.

 

As for playing with the wife and kids, I'm working on that. The family is pretty dysfunctional and these guitars are pretty much therapy for me. When I'm not stuck in front of the computer I'm making it a point to get outside while the gettin's good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
It ain't haunting me, BigAl. I view it as a cadaver now that is instructing me on what to do with upcoming builds.

 

As for playing with the wife and kids, I'm working on that. The family is pretty dysfunctional and these guitars are pretty much therapy for me. When I'm not stuck in front of the computer I'm making it a point to get outside while the gettin's good.

 

This answered my question as to whether you were going to bless it and bury it or what you were going to do with it. Git cadaver is a fitting end for what was once a good git (if it's that old Tak we're talking about). As for distractions, you go for all you can get. God only knows you need it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Or I could continue to use it as a guinea pig to learn repairs which is the luthiers bread and butter. The body is mostly intact as is the neck. I just need to replace the top which was toast with cracked/lifting bracing and a HUGE spruce bridge plate. I have CNC'd bracing and a bridge from Martin. RC Tonewoods up in NY has student grade Sitka soundboards. Stewmac over in Ohio sells tuning machines for $40 and rosettes for less than $10. Conceivably I could fix it for about $100 in materials all told. The only reason it would cost that much is because I need to replace the bridge and fingerboard because I got too happy with taking it apart. I'm a sick puppy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Or I could continue to use it as a guinea pig to learn repairs which is the luthiers bread and butter. The body is mostly intact as is the neck. I just need to replace the top which was toast with cracked/lifting bracing and a HUGE spruce bridge plate. I have CNC'd bracing and a bridge from Martin. RC Tonewoods up in NY has student grade Sitka soundboards. Stewmac over in Ohio sells tuning machines for $40 and rosettes for less than $10. Conceivably I could fix it for about $100 in materials all told. The only reason it would cost that much is because I need to replace the bridge and fingerboard because I got too happy with taking it apart. I'm a sick puppy.

 

That sounds like good therapy to me. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • Members

I droned on for about 10 minutes over this the other night with my iPhone. I tried to be informative but I understand that it's pretty boring stuff if you're not into repairs. It's still a work in progress though, so the ending is TBD.

 

9TIPAlBxnLU

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...