Thinking DIY

After putting the strings on the guitar I could see that the action was quite high at both the 1st and the 12th fret. Quite high meaning 4+ mm on both sides at the 12th fret, and ~1.2mm on both sides at the 1st fret. The "normal"/medium action based on several sources is somewhere a bit below 3.2mm (0.125 inch) on the bass side and 2.5 mm (0.095 inch) on the treble side E (see https://www.liutaiomottola.com/formulae/action.htm) So I took my saw and cut about 3-4 mm from the bottom of the saddle (given that the material removed from the saddle should be twice as much you want to lower your action at the 12th fret), which was too much, given that I have quite a deep groove (5mm) for the saddle, and the saddle sides at the treble and bass E went below the bridge level. Not good. Another mistake. But learning is good. Measure twice, cut once proved to be a good motto again. Nevermind, I took another saddle, which was a bit smaller than the previous one (at least in height, it w...

So after the last failure , I have ordered and received a set of new clamps, and after sort-of fixing the finish (and some additional work to polish the whole surface with some automotive polishing paste to make the shellac shine) I glued the bridge again (First I have masked around the bridge to avoid glue squeeze-out ruining the finish, and let the masking tape ruin the finish), with the three extremely heavy and serious clamps clamping it down, tightened until there's some glue squeeze out. Given that the clamps were quite heavy, I kept the guitar standing to avoid the clamps' weight pushing the top down. I waited 24 hours, and removed the two clamps from the sides, and waited another 24 hours for safety. Then strung it up (with some used colored strings for the sake of the test). And the bridge didn't break off. And the guitar sounded great, intonation was mostly ok. But there were some more adjustments left, as the action was quite high.

As the bridge was clamped, I couldn't stand to wait, and realized that I could already start leveling and polishing the frets. So after getting some inspiration from other builders, I have started. The most useful videos  I've watched on how to do a fret job were: Fret job - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra1-HQ6GOxw - Highline Guitars Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDy7cF255dY Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbr0VR2CdQ Fret polishing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpeCq_1AvwU - Guns and Guitars So, my steps were: Skipped checking the neck being straight, as I checked it already with the frets of, and it was dead-straight, and I have sanded it  straight Created a leveling beam from a longer (~50cm) block of wood which was planed to be perfectly flat on two sides. I have glued 240 and 320 grit sandpaper to the two flat sides Masked the fretboard with masking tape Marked the tops of the frets with a black sharpie Sanded with 24...

After letting the glued bridge 24 hours clamped I took the clamps off, and stringed it up. One note lower than it should've been. And when fine-tuning the 5th string the bridge was ripped off. Fortunately not with a strange trajectory, not hititng anything (not even the top), and only causing two minor tear-outs on the top. So the clamp didn't work. Next step: order a set of serious clamps. In 5 minutes order was placed. Next step: I want to hear how the guitar sounds, so mount all the 6 strings with the "temporary floating bridge" used for testing the bridge location. And with all 6 strings mounted I found that the initial bridge location was off on the bass side. And probably my scale length wasn't measured correctly, as the bass side was off by 6-7mm, which is a lot. Nevertheless, after setting the bridge at the correct location, it looked ugly with the clamp and the cardboard on the guitar, but it did work. And boooooy, it sounded really good... rich, bassy,...

Neck glued and clamped With everything prepared, it was time to start gluing... the messy, ugly thing with no option to Undo. First I glued the neck: put some glue on both sides of the neck joint, both on the body and on the neck, pushed the neck in place, put the bolt with the nut in to pull the body and the neck together on the horizontal axis, and clamped the end of the fretboard to the body with some cardboard used to protect the body from clamp marks. Two clamps went on from the sides, and an additional clamp from the soundhole, clamping together the brace+soundboard+fretboard. After 24 hours I have removed the clamps, and it was time to glue the bridge. Another safety check, another test-fit of the bridge to more precisely mark the bridge location, with the two tester strings has revealed that the bridge should be ~1mm farther away from the soundhole than I have initially marked it (the unfinished area), but that isn't really visible, and probably will cover that...

Gluing the bridge is an important step, and the bridge must be clamped properly while the glue is hardening to have a good grip. That is done either with a special bridge-clamp clamping through the string holes (which I don't have) or with C-clamps, which I haven't found around. So there's room for improvisation. After checking how people make their home-made bridge clamps, I have found three designs which I particularly like. One from Ben Crowe of Crimson Guitars , simple and mostly wood-based, and another one from Jack Houweling, which is based around some wood extending the arms of a quick-grip clamp, and the last one , based around a bent piece of metal, from Rattlecan Guitar Restorations. Although I like Ben's one, I don't have Mahogany and Maple (or too much hardwood at all), I only have some black locust/false acacia/robinia pseudoacacia, which might be good enough as a replacement. An additional complication is that the bridge I have is an over-sized one...

The neck and the body being prepared for mounting, I decided to first finish them with boiled linseed oil. Applying BLO was easy, and resulted in a beautiful satin finish. Applied two coats with a brush to the guitar top and the headstock, with 24+ hours between the two coats. I started doing a french polish with a very small rubber on the body, but it didn't really turn out as I expected, so I first sanded with P500, then with P1200 sandpaper, and went on with a third coat of BLO, and then restarted the french polishing (after reading some more and watching some more instructional videos) This time I used some thinner (white spirits, as I didn't have denatured alcohol) to thin the dewaxed shellac, and applied it with a larger rubber. Went over both the body and the headstock in a session of 5 runs, sanding with 500, then 1200 grit sandpaper between the 3rd and the 4th run, as the rubber got a bit sticky and left some marks on the finish, and wanted to even that out. The he...

With the neck being prepared (headstock finished with boiled linseed oil, fretboard inlay in place) the time came for (re)fretting the instrument. I had a set of fretwire laying around, but they were fairly thin ones, and very loose in the fretboard, so I selected some wider ones (both the upper and the lower part), namely Dunlop Accu-Fret Jumbo 6110 , they fit almost perfectly, not too tight, but not loose either. I first verified that all fret channels are deep enough (given that I have reshaped the fretboard to have a 10" radius the problematic parts were near the edges), and cut them a bit deeper where the fretwire didn't fit. Test fitting the fretwire Then came the gluing part. Given that I wanted to have minimal mess on the fretboard (given that it is a light maple, and given my experiences while doing the inlay with superglue), out of the options suggested by a StewMac video for superglue I chose the one with adding the glue from the sides, but as that didn...

As this guitar won't ever be the same as it was, why not put my imprint on it? Customizing the rosette would be how the masters are doing it, but I'm just a newbie, so the easiest way to do it is having custom inlay(s). The headstock surely can receive something, as it's quite empty, it never had anything on it. But the fingerboard also looks plane, so why not customize that, as the frets are off, it was radiused, but a couple more strokes can't hurt. So adding a 12th fret marker would be the nice thing. After some thought I decided that the topic of this guitar is renaissance/new live/etc. So the inlays will be around that theme: Headstock inlay design The headstock inlay will be the chinese mu symbol, meaning wood and also wooden/made of wood (see google translate ). That's completely true for a guitar. But in a broader vision, namely the chinese five elements philosophy "The Wood Element is the energy associated with regeneration, renewal, and grow...

Neck set at proper angle So, there are some changes in the plans (e.g. installing frets to the fretboard will happen before finishing - if I'll finish the fretboard at all). But there are ones, which complicate my life. A lot. As the bridge is done, neck angle can be checked. And it is off, so the lowest possible action will be very high, if I simply glue the neck in as it is now.  Setting neck angle (aka neck reset) So I took a long straight-edge, measured how much tilt-back the neck needs in order to be flat with the top of the bridge. And 2-3mm of the neck heel must be taken off to have it straight up to the bridge. Straight up to the bridge Marked a straight line from the intersection of the neck heel and the fretboard to the lower part of the heel, 2-3 mm into the wood. With a chisel shaved off some material, and progressed slowly, checking the fit after each 5-10 chisel strokes, until I got to the desired neck angle and neck fit. Shimming the neck join...

The original headstock was almost rectangular, with a small slope on the top. I didn't like it very much, but wasn't sure if reshaping is worth it, but after several rounds of drawing and designing (most of the time directly on the sanded-down headstock) I have finally done it. First design on paper, test-fitted to the neck First I filled the holes which will need to be moved (due to the curve going close to them, and the tuning keys shouldn't bee too close (or too far) from the edge. I did that with some wooden dowels I could find around, plus wood glue. After the glue cured, I have cut them with a saw to an approximate size, then sanded the headstock (with the dowels sticking out) to strip it from the finish and to level the dowels. I also filled the screw holes on the back with some toothpick and wood glue. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture with the holes filled. I then drew a thin outline on the headstock of how it could look, went over the line with a p...

With both the neck and the body in a better shape, the work continues. Ordering would take ages (one month or more), and I really would like to take this guitar repair as a challenge of May, I decided to try to "fix" the old bridge. Started off with some bridge designs I have found online, marked the saddle slot and the curves with a pencil. The design is heavily inspired from the fairly standard bridges, but with the constraints I had from the string holes and the bridge size. After the "design" being ready, started sanding off the finish, then reshaping the bridge to a more "curvy" bridge and touching up the parts where the strings have cut into the wood. I decided to mount it backwards compared to it's original state, so with the string holes facing away from the soundhole, and not towards it, wrapping around the bridge.     The end result isn't perfect, as I didn't want to sand t...