Personal project

So 10 years ago I got an Aria Mosrite copy.  At some point during high school, my mom was throwing a temper tantrum, presumably about my grades, and decided to kick it over to teach me a lesson.  Broke a few of the original tuners, and the vibrato tailpiece.  After high school, I replaced the tuners and made do with the lack of a working trem, it still held the strings in place, but I decided to just go ahead and try my hand at restoration.  I filled the trem pocket with bondo, drilled it for a les paul style bridge, and painted the whole thing green.

I also had cut a new pickguard and replaced the pickups and electronics because they were all pretty much shot.  However, once I started to go to school for guitar repair, I realized something I had never taken into account.  Bridge angle, and scale length.  No wonder it never tuned right.  So I pretty much just let it sit for the last few years, occasionally tuning it down for "the rain song" by Zeppelin.  Over the winter I decided to strip 'er down again, and filled all the holes...again.  I primed up the body with some flat black, and was going to repaint it black this time, but the paint reacted with the primer and started bubbling. 

Well, I couldn't let it stay looking like that and have it show through the final coat of paint, so now i'm stripping it yet again, and probably just gonna leave it natural, with a bigsby/wigsby trem on it to cover the bondo.

This time I used my heat gun, and it went so much more smoothly.  After that I used paint stripper, and it'll still need some sanding before I can do anything with it.  I'll post more when I have time to work on it, I just wanted to get started before my next paying repair job comes in on wednesday.

Ukulele wood came in today

Just got this pile of walnut in for some ukuleles.  These sets will probably be good for soprano size.  The bookmatched pieces are already spoken for, but I can get more if anyone is interested.  Tons of other wood selections available too, just ask and I'll send a price list.  I also have some sapele and mahogany in stock, as well as some flamed maple that could be used as neck wood.

Finishing up the Regal

Took off all the clamps this afternoon and got to work cleaning up glue drops and making sure the sides were as even as possible.  Feels solid as a rock now.  A far cry from the warped, delaminated pile of crap it was when it came in.  I don't do painting here, don't have the room for a spray booth, and Lou is an accomplished painter, so I'll let him take care of that if he chooses.  My job was to make it playable and sturdy, and I feel I've done well on this one.

Closer view of the sound hole to show the new bracing.  I wanted to try to find him a new label to replace the original which was in poor condition, but I haven't had any luck yet.

Can't wait to hear some slide on this one.

Almost done

Got the bridge doctor support system and the bridge itself installed last night.  Today I decided to put the back back on.  Went on almost as easy as it came off.  Looks like the only uneven spots are where the wood was chipped/worn away, aside from that its lined up perfectly.   I know when people see this they'll probably think "damn thats a lot of clamps!" but I actually would've prefered to use a few more, that was just all I have at the moment.  Anyway, sometime in the next few days I'll post pics of it finished.

Quick Update

So the other day I worked on the bridge plate/brace.  It was surprisingly very straight considering the overall condition of the rest of them, but it was placed off-center and the string holes were on the edge of it.  I cut out the damaged section, and added a sturdier piece of maple scrap to it.  Last night I popped the bridge off since it was hanging by a thread anyway and it will be easier to do it this way as opposed to trying to get enough glue underneath it.  I got the brace placed where I needed it, and used some screws through the string holes to keep it in place, and then set up a makeshift gobar deck for the edges.  Looking pretty sturdy now.  I'll be reinstalling the bridge in a little while.

Back Bracing DONE

So last night I finished up gluing in the brace wood and let it sit overnight.  I worked all day in shifts today carving these braces by hand with chisels, a small palm plane, and then just sanding by hand to keep the contours rounded.  My hand and arm are sore as hell.   Here's where I'm at now:

*edit*  I meant to add that if they look slightly off center, its due to two factors.  A)I used the lines from the original braces to line up the edges of the new ones, and B)I carved them by hand, so they aren't 100% perfect.

Regal Parlor update

So I talked to Lou, and decided that since the back and braces are so warped, there's no way I can really get it back to its original radius.  I'm just going to try and flatten it out as much as possible and hope for the best.  I bought some hardwood brace blanks and cut them to size and started gluing a little while ago.  Here's the first pic of the progress:

Since I'm not using radiused braces, I'm just going with regular clamps with X braced pressure, seems to be doing the trick so far.  I'm anxious to see how it holds up.