More Cromwell back braces, and a red herring for the pickguard.

I'm covering a few days of work here.

This brace looks really good, unlike the other two. 

But, looks are deceiving. This brace is loose through the middle, which is an odd place for a brace to be loose. Regardless, it needs to be glued. 

I covered up the label, and put tape down on both sides. 

I used my cutters to make craft sticks with a notched end so that they would stay on the brace. 

A quick test shows that they fit snugly. I didn't get any shots of gluing the brace, but I basically put glue on the tape and worked it in with my bent palette knife. 

The soundhole was right where I need the sticks, so I made a bridge out of one stick to push the brace 

A cotton swap in a needlenose plier cleaned up the mess. 

The next day, it looked pretty good, and it was solid again. 

Now for that last brace, way in the back. That fracture at the end of the brace needed to be glued in the split and glued to the back as well. Luckily, the soundhole on the Cromwell is big enough that I can stick my arm in all the way, and touch this area.  

I started putting down tape. That hole in the bottom of the guitar sure lets in a lot of light! 

As always, I had to cover up the label. 

I made several braces, and test fit them. There is a top brace above the bottom brace, so I notched both ends of the sticks. 

Getting glue back there was going to be a major chore. I started filling pipettes with glue. 

I made six. It wasn't enough. 

This is before I did the cleanup. As you can see, it took a lot of clue, and a lot of mess, to really get things taken care of. This is so deep in the guitar that the mess isn't really a problem, but I wasn't too happy about it. The good news is that I got glue everywhere it needed to be, and the end is really well glued now. 

I decided to start work on regluing the pickguard. 

I traced the pickguard onto blank paper. 

Using a magnet and a pencil, I traced the braces from underneath the pickguard. 

I also used a contour gauge to show how deep the braces and the bridge patch are. 

The next day, the inside of the guitar is messy, but everything is solid. 

I made copies of my tracing, and cut one out. 

I glued the cutout to a stiff piece of particle board. 

Then I looked at the guitar again. 

Do you see the problem? The area the pickguard is going to sit is curved, due to the belly in the top. I can't clamp this flat, it would, at best, distort the guitar, and more likely it would cause some damage. So I stopped making the clamping caul, and I will instead order some adhesive film to reattach the pickguard. I didn't lose too much time to this, and I'm glad I figured this out before going any further.

Back to the Cromwell, and a few other tidbits

So, a couple months ago we made a spruce patch for a dig in the top of the Cromwell. We carved out a small bowl shape, supported the heck out of the underside of the top, then pressed a wet piece of spruce wood into the hole with a LOT of pressure.

Later on, and completely undocumented, we unclamped the thing, and glued that press-fit and now dry piece of spruce into the hole.

Last week, it was chisel time.

This is after we started carving. Basically, we took a nice, flat chisel with a bent handle, and started bringing the patch down. 

This is the final product. 

The patch is a nice fit, fills the space perfectly, and even has grain that is a good match to the surrounding grain. It is also very light. 

The plan is to expose the patch to a lot of sunlight, and then add some tint and shellac to blend it in. It looks better than a big divot in the top, and it's a lot stronger.  

The patch looks great, and it is very well fit. This beats sitting down and carving a patch for hours while chalk fitting. It was pretty terrifying to squish a chunk of spruce on the top of a vintage instrument with tremendous pressure, but, thanks to careful placement of cauls under the top, there is no damage at all.

A violin project came over to me from a cousin, who want to be able to play this family heirloom. It had spent most of its life strung left handed, even though it was built right handed. Someone added mechanical tuners some time in the past, and there was a terrible reglue of the fingerboard at some time in the past, using really gooey epoxy that failed to harden.

I've already stripped most of the hardware. 

I did a quick glue job on this crack. 

But when I removed the tuners - oh my goodness. That is a real mess. 

That is a LOT of damage, and the neck is badly warped as well. It may be time to think of just replacing the neck. 

It was a hide glue day, so I glued up several projects. Just separated backs and sides. 

Ray is also working on a banjo, a nice Bacon FF banjo with a pretty poorly set neck. He was building up the end of the dowel stick to reset the angle, and had to also fill the screw hole. Fun stuff!

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.

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.