This is a front view of the guitar as it arrived in my possession. While I was prepared by my Dad for a guitar in rough shape - this one is pretty bad. The top is split and delaminated from the body. The original pin bridge is gone, and has been replaced by a tin tailpiece - this will have to go. The neck is badly raised, although appears quite straight, with the fingerboard broken, but all parts present. Tuning machines intact, although the strings look like ones that were put on maybe 30+ years ago. The case is in very bad shape, not sure how much of this can be salvaged. For a guitar that has been stored in a basement for 30+ years, the wood is sound and likely can be restored with minimal wood replacement.

Here's a view from the back, with the body inserted in the mold to re-establish its original shape. The neck has been removed, which was a major challenge, however, the dovetail remained intact which will make re-assembly much easier. The fingerboard however did not fare as well, it was pretty much destroyed in the removal process, and cannot be salvaged, this can easily be made from scratch. In this shot you can see the kerfing being removed, some of it is glued okay, while other bits just fall off. it will all need to be removed and replaced.The top is missing a section as you can see daylight in the top left part of the body. I was trying to avoid removing the top but this is likely necssary to replace the missing sections and flatten it again. the bracing will be replaced, as well as the bridge plate. So far so good - no major surpises yet.

The top came to me heavily damaged, missing about a quarter of an inch around the bottom of the lower bout (the wide part of the guitar). It was in three pieces, and heavily warped. Once it was removed from the body, I cleaned the excess glue and kerfing off the inside and prepared to re-assemble and re-build it. In this shot you can see the walnut patches which hold together the cracks from the inside, I made the walnut as thin as I dared to keep the top as flexible as possible. The clamps are holding the last of the braces I put on the top to replace the originals, which were mostly gone. The originla braces were likely spruce, but I prefer to work with cedar, which also matches better on colour. Also being a little lighter they produce a nicer sound. The original spruce bridge plate was scraped off and replaced with an ash one, which is flexible, yet strong.

On to the Back.

You can see, this is starting to look like a guitar again, the neck is just placed on and the entire assembly is clamped to a flat surface. I will leave it like this for a few days in an attempt to re-aquaint it with its original shape. The guitar has spent much of the last decades in a collapsed V-shape from the string pressure. This is a very important step, as the neck and top must be in the same plane in order for the strings to lay properly over the fretboard; otherwise it would be unplayable.

The neck itself was still quite flat, which is excellent news because trying to straighten a twisted neck is very difficult. The tuning machines were broken, and when I removed them, I realized they were two different types, neither of which was likely the original. I have purchased some nice new ones, which I will have to distress a bit to blend in with the rest of the guitar.

In this shot, you can also see the inside of the back, with its guaze "band-aids" and new cedar bracing, the bracing has to be shaped and it will be ready to be reunited with the body. I am not sure what the black is on the back and inside the body, it was everywhere, don't know if is was the paint from building. I can imagine maybe one of the kids 60 years ago dumped ink or something into the soundhole and it got sloshed around before it dried - whatever it was made quite a mess.

Good progress with no major setbacks. YET!

This is looking more like a guitar all the time. One big challenge here has been that the guitar was not really square or a perfect shape to begin with. For example if you look at the top, the rosette around the soundhole is 1/4" closer to one side than the other. One of the sides is higher than the other by 3/16", which makes it impossible to put back together square, without changing the original guitar. So now that it is together, when I sight down the body it has a small twist. I will take this into account when I re-install the neck, and shape the saddle, trying to shave a bit from each to split the difference. The next step is to mount the bridge to the body, reset the nect and make a fingerboard from scratch. The old fingerboard disintegrated upon removal; I may also have to adjust the scale length to make everything work out so the guitar plays properly. This body will have to be re-bound; originally the top had purfling and plastic binding and the back was not bound. Because of the rapairs to the top and back, I will likely bind them both to give some strength to the body.

As you see there is considerable finish repair required, the objective here will be to clean up the paintwork on the back and to re-seal the top so it is protected - not to make the guitar look new.

The original bridge had been removed or fell off long ago, and someone had installed a tin tailpiece tacked into the body of the guitar. This was one of the many apparent repairs done to this instrument over the years; it is interesting that a guitar which likely cost around $5 when it was new, received such loving attention over the years - a testament to the frugality of the times.

This new diamond-style bridge is commonly used to replace these vintage ones; in fact it fit exactly over the imprint of the original, so this is likely very true to the original instrument.

You can also get a look at the binding I installed to replace the original; I have already started the ageing process so it does not look too new. The neck is not glued on, it is just placed into the slot for scale measurement.