Kamaka Uke, sanding blocks, and filling in missing wood

So, the last thing I posted before was about sanding blocks. Here we go.

Sanding blocks

 There you go. Get a piece of wood, and glue sandpaper to one side. After it is dry, take it to your belt sander and true up the edges. You now have a sanding block that can get into corners and clean up all kinds of problems. This is what I used to clean up the place where the bridge goes on the Cromwell, and what I started using to set up the Kamaka for wood replacement.

Speaking of the Kamaka, here is my first idea.

The sides are now flat diagonals, and I have put in some koa in the deep part of the slot. 

Not too great. 

Really ugly from the side, there is some significant wood loss here. 

I started trimming a new piece to fit in. This is an early shot, I got it to fit quite well. It's a tough fit, though.

My friend Ray came over, and we started looking at what I had done, and the instrument overall, and decided to get more drastic.

Just chop it all out, the heck with it. Much easier to fit a nice piece in. 

But how will I flatten out the bottom of that space? With another custom sanding block, of course! I made this and sanded it to barely fit in the space. I managed to get down pretty far, then the sandpaper came off, and I had to go pick up the kids, and it was time to quit. I'll get back to it tomorrow, though. 

 That is a lot of wood to remove, but it will be stronger for it. Frankly, there is no good way to fix this disaster, short of making a new neck, which I will end up doing if the thing breaks at some point. For now, this is going to create a workable solution.

I also took a look at the Cromwell with Ray.

This is that hole. 

The patch now fit perfectly. Hooray! I won't glue this up until the back braces are done, though.  

There was a nasty piece of missing wood at the bridge, so we chiseled out a bowl shaped hole. 

A little sanding made it smoother, and more bowl shaped. 

We carved a piece of spruce to roughly fit, then soaked it really well and clamped it on hard. The pressure will help it form to the hole, and then I can glue it on and shave it level. 

We ended up leaving off the wax paper, so that the moisture helps form the top as well. There will be some color and finish work to do, but at least there will be wood there to color and finish! The chip out in that spot was really bad from the previous bridge failure. 

 I'd never heard of doing a spruce repair this way before. I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Improving a Johnson resonator

So, last Christmas, I ended up with a Johnson resonator. (Don't ask). This is one of the early really cheap ones. Cheap construction, lots of badly placed plywood for the resonator to sit on, and a WAY too heavy spider.

WHOA!! Six ounces is a LOT of weight. 

The good folks at Paul Beard sell an import spider "for experimentation only" that weighs in at a bulky 5.7 ounces, this is even HEAVIER. What a great way to deaden sound!

Shallow slot

In Dan Erlewine's acoustic guitar repair videos (GREAT videos, by the way. Worth the money. Go buy them.) he spends a lot of time going over resonator upgrades. One key point is that the slots need to be a lot deeper to really hold the saddle correctly. That also removes a little bit of metal, not a bad deal.

I took the spider over to the belt sander and went to town, taking off material in the webbing between the legs. I also flattened the spider so that it no longer rocked on a flat surface.

Not bad, but could be better. You can see the curves in the webbing. 

Using three hack saw blades taped together to deepen the slot. 

I managed to take off .8 of an ounce. 

Lightening the bridge and improving the saddle slot really helped the guitar sing. It was amazing how much better it sounded. I'm sure I could do more, but I'm not sure how much more material I could remove without weakening the spider.

Sorry for the really long layoff

It's amazing how time sneaks up on a person.

First, I'll go back to a few things I've worked on.

The cuatro was a real misery to work on. I ended up creating a laminated side for it, made from - heat sensitive shelving edging! It's a terrible way to do things, but there was no other way to get something to adhere to those very thin sides. With some sanding and finish work, it was obvious, but blended in and looked fine. More importantly, I lowered the nut slots so that the thing actually plays close to in tune. The owner was very happy, and that is what counts.

The tenor guitar bridge turned out great, and the guitar now sounds - like a cheap Stella, but perhaps a bit louder, thanks to the lack of nuts and bolts on the bridge. Perhaps a simple philosophy should be "NO METAL PARTS ON THE BRIDGE OF AN ACOUSTIC!!".

I've had little time to work on instruments over the past year, due to my choice to earn my masters degree. I do have a couple sets of picture to put up, though, so here we go.

First, I am the happy recipient of a 1936 Cromwell flattop guitar. This is a Gibson made guitar, but it has suffered mightily. It was bought new in Honolulu in 1937 by my wife's grandfather, who then gave it to my father-in-law when he came to California in 1961. He didn't like it much, and I can't say I blame him; by that time, the top was nicely bellied, and the bridge had suffered a pretty bad reglue. The action was probably sky-high at that point, making the guitar almost unplayable.

My father-in-law got another guitar he loves around 1964, so the Cromwell was consigned to a variety of closets and garages over the years, finally ending up in the attic of a garage for the last 25 years, without a case, at full tension. It suffered from a tremendous buildup of grunge, stickers, cracks, bellying, finish damage, and corrosion.

As received. Strings have been slackened, and I have experimentally rubbed saliva on part of the pickguard. 

Distributed by the Continental Music Company, later known as Conn instruments. 

What is really hard to see here, and impossible to see now, is a decal under the bridge and partially covered by the middle sticker. It is from "Thayer's", a music shop in Honolulu. Sadly, cleaning the guitar wiped out what remained of this decal. 

That is a lot of dirt my friends. 

The entire back. Notice the horizontal lines. 

Those lines are the result of lying on something that ate into the finish. Probably some kind of rubber or vinyl. 

A hole in the bottom. I should have searched the attic for the missing chunk of wood. 

General dirt and cobwebs. 

The poor reglue on the bridge. 

A cockroach egg - welcome to Hawaii!!

That hole does allow for a nice shot of the lifting back braces. 

After cleaning.

So, let's talk cleaning. This guitar was filthy. I mean, REALLY FILTHY. So I cleaned it with soap and water. Seriously, this is a great way to clean a gross guitar. Get a bucket of lightly soapy water and a very clean non-scratching rag, and wipe the instrument down. Dirt came off easily, without any elbow grease, and the finish was not affected. I would argue (and many would agree) that you should NEVER use any kind of cleaner besides water, a bit of soap, saliva, or naphtha on a guitar or other string instrument. There is just no need, and all of those "cleaners" being sold have stuff in them that is unnecessary or even harmful to your instrument. Realize that this guitar had not been cleaned in any way for 50 years, and had been lightly baked in an attic for 25 years, yet it came clean beautifully with some soapy water and a rag.

And I can hear it now. "But what if the water ruins the finish?" Well, in that case, stop ever touching the guitar with your sweaty fingers, or your wet from holding a beer fingers, or whatever. Water is not a problem. I didn't dunk the guitar in a bathtub, I wiped it clean. And dried it rather quickly afterwards, of course.

Use water, soap and water, saliva, or Naphtha to clean your guitar. If you use Naphtha on your fingerboard, it will look really dry. You can just leave it, or use a tiny bit of lemon oil or mineral oil, wiping it almost dry immediately afterwards. (No, you don't need to oil your damn fingerboard either, it won't dry out, it might get dirty, but you provide plenty of oil from your fingers already, thanks.)

Okay, off my soapy water box now.

After some time elapsed, I had a few more sessions of work on the Cromwell.

Here is that Thayer's decal. I knew that cleaning would probably destroy what little was left. 

The stickers are off, but a lot of residue remained. 

After cleaning, even less of the decal is evident. 

The sticker residue came off nicely, leaving very shiny undisturbed finish and lighter wood where they were. 

Lots of glue squeezeout from the bridge reglue.

A sharp flat chisel makes quick work of the mess. 

The pickguard came off nicely. 

 The pickguard came off because it has shrunk, creating several nice cracks in the top nearby. Those have since been cleated.

Some grain runout tore while taking the pickguard off. I will need to fix this before putting the pickguard back on. 

Some time later, I also removed the bridge.

Typical heat lamp and big guard method. 

Ick - lots of torn grain, damage from when it first came off, and lots of glue to clean off.

I need to take a picture of the sanding block used to clean this up. But what we have here is a nasty bit of torn grain from when the bridge came off the first time. I cleaned out the area, and cut some spruce to fill it in. 

This is the crack from the pickguard shrinking. It need gluing and cleating. 

Gluing the filler for the bridge area. I take these chunks of Plexiglas and round the corners so that they don't leave a mark. 

Clamping the cracked area at the same time. 

I'll take another set of pictures tomorrow to show some more progress, how that bridge area got cleaned up, how that big hole is getting filled, how the top is all cleated, how I will glue the back braces - whew!!

And, after the body is all done, I get to pull the neck off and reset it! WHOOHOO!!

Oh yes, and I will also update the dang Kamaka pineapple uke. That thing is getting just silly.