Luthier Repairs

I have always worked with wood and I bought my first guitar at the age of 16. Fast forward 44 years and you arrive at a point in time when I began to daydream about building a guitar. Images of grandeur in my mind about exotic woods, unique bindings, beautiful inlays and an incredible tone with sustain. Sure, it must be difficult, and sure it must require some specific tools but wouldn't it be great to hold it admire it and play it?
So, I developed a plan which is my usual way of approaching things, I would begin by purchasing a guitar on ebay that needed repair, or find and old guitar that was damaged and repair it. During the repair I would gain an understanding and an insight into the construction.
I repaired two guitars, the first was a Yamaha Classical, that belonged to a friend of mine. He had loaned it to another friend that had left it out on his back porch in the sun and this damaged the pick guard, kind of baking it in to the wood. So my task was to remove this pick guard that actually was a large piece of clear plastic that went from the bridge to the neck  and covered the entire upper bout including the rosette. Well when I began removing it some wood came with it! Okay, I thought, I will sand these areas, what a plan!! It was then I realized as I sanded through a layer of wood and saw a different pattern underneath that this was a laminate top!! I removed the bridge and continued sanding to get a level surface and thus began my first encounter of trying to salvage a guitar on the brink of becoming a pile of scrap wood. I tried many types of stains to cover the different wood patterns; the idea was to stain it a natural wood color then use a tint to get it back to the original orange Yamaha color.

Here we have the original damage you can see were I began lifting the plastic and wood came up with it. After some initial lifting of wood I changed my tactics and added a solvent to the plastic trying to soften it and lift it from the wood, but the damage was already done and put me in a whirlwind trying to correct the damage.

Here we see the bridge removed and the different wood patterns I was trying to cover with a natural wool stain, not sure how many times I tried this when I realized it was not going to work. So I set about building a spray room in my garage and bought new spray equipment. I decided to spray a very light opaque beige color that I created by mixing opaque white and dark brown with clear lacquer to cover the different wood grains. This was an ambitious task, the first attempt came out a bit pink looking. I removed it and started over, the next attempt was better and looked about the same tone as spruce, covering the different wood grains from showing through. I followed that with transparent mixture using Transtint, Mahogany Red with Amber to create an orange color similar to the original Yamaha color. With the binding and rosette still tapped off I applied two very fine coats of this transparent orange color followed by about 12 coates of clear.

Here is the finished repair, the orange color is not a perfect match to the original and there is no grain but all in all it was a positive result. My first and what an experience, I did learn a lot about lacquer and Transtint that will help me in my first guitar build a "Parlor Guitar" check out the build www.youtube.com/dbhoward56 . Many books later, much more research and new machinery, I am in the middle of the build. I have experienced some mistakes that I was able to recover from but this Parlor Guitar is going to be the first big step on my journey to being a Luthier.

12 String Repair
My next repair was an Aria 12 string. This guitar has a bolt on neck that bolts from the back through the head block up into the neck. While under tension from the strings the head block came loose from the top and sides and along with the neck crushed forward into the rosette and sound hole. When I received the guitar I seriously thought there was nothing I could do to repair it. I removed the neck to get a better view of the damage and thought I could cut out the damaged soundboard area and splice in a new piece of spruce, then make a jig the size of the sound hole, route out the old rosette and install a new one. But first I would need to remove the back to examine the head block and gain access to the inside of the guitar to inspect the bracing and build the jig to route out the rosette.
During the process of taking off the back by removing the binding I did damage some areas on the side which was a rosewood laminate, in fact the whole box was laminate woods. These damaged areas on both the sides and top would later require a complete new paint job, from a natural finish to a 3 tone sunburst using amber, red and black to cover the different wood grains exposed during the repair.
I used epoxy to reattach the head block to the side and top, installed the spruce patch and new rosette and re-glued a loose brace. At this point I realized the guitar would need a new paint job and original natural finish could not be salvaged. Based on this fact I proceeded to remove the bridge to allow for a nice sunburst. I reattached the back, installed new binding and used wood filler on those low ares on the sides where the laminate was damaged.

 Here is a closeup of the spruce patch and the new rosette. If you look at the top of the sound hole you can just make out the spruce patch, it turned out almost perfect.

In looking at the fretboard and peg head it was very evident new fret wire was needed and the tuners were in very bad shape. I removed the old fret wire did some epoxy repair on the fretboard, filled in the screw holes from the old tuners and then began the painting process.

 Here was my first attempt at a  two tone vintage paint job, but in touching up the black to make it more balanced on each side of the red, just after this photo was take, a drop of black dipped out of my airbrush and fell in the middle of the red and I had to start over. A big mistake in not putting some clear between the different colors.

 Here is the next attempt, a 3 color sunburst achieved with vintage amber, red and black.

The painting process was, first I would put on the color coats, black for the neck, sides and back using a spary gun, then a beige opaque for the top to cover up the wood grain issues, then begin the sunburst on the top followed by 12 coats of clear on all parts. For the sunburst using an airbrush I painted the vintage amber first, followed by red tring to keep a very balanced tear drop look, then followed by black trying to leave a thin layer of red between the black and amber. I thnik it was a success on the paint job, then I installed 12 mini Grover tuners which really completed the total conversion from broken to new.

 And here is the final look just before putting on the pick guard, nice!!

I did encounter a big problem when bolting the neck back on and tuning the guitar up to pitch, it became clear there was a big problem with the harmonics of the guitar, in fact they were way off, the distance from the nut, a zero fret, to the 12 fret and from the 12th fret to the saddle were not even close to the same measurement. After several hours of looking at the numbers I realized I would have to adjust this distance. So I took off the neck taped off the back with masking tape did some measuring and marking to move the holes out 13/64" filled the old holes drilled the new and this did the trick!! Check out the videos of the repair.
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbhoward56#p/u/12/8Tk0r7gZ51c
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbhoward56#p/u/11/pMRglN1ufuI
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbhoward56#p/u/8/baxmOhjZw18
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbhoward56#p/u/7/xjQX5lB106k
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbhoward56#p/u/5/5TYmOsY-KsA