Guitar restoration - Part 1 - The victim

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While wandering around the local flea market I have found a dreadnought guitar. As I have recently (after building my electric) exchanged my acoustic guitar for a multi-effects pedal (BOSS ME-25) to have fun, I didn't have an acoustic anymore, this looked interesting.

Even more so in the context of willing to build an acoustic from scratch (after building an ukulele from scratch, but that's subject of another series), the Russian dreadnought in rough conditions longing for a restoration looked like something fitting in the path of practicing guitar building, finishing, fixing.
The price of the guitar was 7$.


The ugly:

* one tuning key missing out of the six
* the head-stock is a rectangle, no design at all
* the body was scratched here and there
* the fingerboard looked like the inverse of the ones seen on guitars, concave, so the middle of the fretboard was lower than the edges. I initially thought it could be from wear, but as it is uniformly the same throughout the full neck, I think it was by design (or the lack of it).
* it only had 2 strings, high E and B, and the B had a small piece of string coating on it, so buzzing whenever I plucked it
* couldn't tell how many piece top it is, whether it is four, five or more pieces
* small gap here and there between the sides and the binding

The bad:

* the neck almost falling off: the joint is loose, the glue completely dry
* the bridge looks like a classical bridge (top-loading) made for steel strings, or mounted reversed, with the strings wrapped around (string rings close to the soundhole, wrapping around the bridge). Due to the string tension however the strings have cut deep into the wood of the bridge

The good:

* Almost straight neck, with a belly, which will probably disappear when it is strung up with 6 strings, like grown-up guitars are
* Nicely figured light coloured (probably maple) neck
* Loud sound (a bit boxy though), as much as I could hear it from plucking the single non-buzzing string
* The whole guitar is light on the top (the back and the sides are darker), which is something I don't see often
* Flat head-stock, no logo or anything to hide, flat rectangle, so it can be customized easily to my liking

So these are the points I have found at first sight, but for the price I probably couldn't get a better subject for restoration, given that the body and the neck looked alright, and the rest should be fixable. Let the journey for restoration begin...

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