Guitar restoration - Part 3 - Preparing the body
First step for the piece work was separating the body and the neck. As most people recommended, started heating (with a hairdryer and an iron) the end of the fretboard and around the joint. The heel was already partially separated, and after unscrewing the screw below the strap button it was ready to be removed, with only the end of the fretboard keeping it. After carefully heating that part and separating with a safety cutter, it came off without (serious) damage.
The joint is very loose, that's a fact. It was already re-glued, and there are two types of glues visible there, a pink one and a white one, so probably wasn't cleaned, maybe the second one was just injected without separating the neck from the body.
To be able to work with the body, the bridge had to be removed too, it involved the same process, but it was a lot longer, the bridge was well-glued, without anything else keeping it in place. While removing it the glue took a bit of the wood with it, so it looked ugly. In the meantime I have also removed the frets from the fretboard, also by heating them with a heating iron, and pulling them out, and managed to do it without serious damage to the fretboard, with a couple of dents, where the frets didn't start to pop out in the middle due to the concave fretboard.
I have started sanding manually, but it was very slow, so I switched to the orbital sander (in spite of the people saying don't touch the guitar with an orbital sander, it will leave marks). Tried with 240 grit, lowest rotation speed, went to mid-speed, was still slow, so went to 120 grit to remove most of the finish, then to 240 to even the eventual swirls with a higher-grit sandpaper. With the finish off, gone through the whole thing with 400-grit, and then with 600-grit sandpaper.
First picture being the body "prepared", aka binding taped off, to sand only the top, the last one with half of the body sanded, and the third one shows that even the sun came out to check my sanded guitar top. I was constantly checking the thickness, but based on measurements from the soundhole I started from around 2.5mm thickness, after sanding it's still above 2mm, and the finish will add some more. Tried to apply equal pressure and touch each part of the guitar about the same time, so that thickness is decreasing uniformly, but I have no idea how well I did with that.
On the half-sanded and the fully sanded top you can see where the bridge was, as there are deep tear-outs there. Probably I didn't heat it up enough. In any case, went over with some wood filler I had around, and the colour matched the top, so it came out nice enough.
After the top being finished, it was time for a thorough cleaning of the body, including sides and back, to clean it from the dust (generated while sanding) and the dirt accumulated over the years. After cleaning (and knowing how much work sanding the top was, adding the fact that the sides are not easily sanded with an orbital sander), I have decided that back and sides will only receive light sanding with fine sandpaper, touchups on dents with nail polish, and additional buffing and polishing. But that will come later, after the bridge is glued on and the top is being finished.
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| Neck, bridge, body and frets, everything is here. |
To be able to work with the body, the bridge had to be removed too, it involved the same process, but it was a lot longer, the bridge was well-glued, without anything else keeping it in place. While removing it the glue took a bit of the wood with it, so it looked ugly. In the meantime I have also removed the frets from the fretboard, also by heating them with a heating iron, and pulling them out, and managed to do it without serious damage to the fretboard, with a couple of dents, where the frets didn't start to pop out in the middle due to the concave fretboard.
I have started sanding manually, but it was very slow, so I switched to the orbital sander (in spite of the people saying don't touch the guitar with an orbital sander, it will leave marks). Tried with 240 grit, lowest rotation speed, went to mid-speed, was still slow, so went to 120 grit to remove most of the finish, then to 240 to even the eventual swirls with a higher-grit sandpaper. With the finish off, gone through the whole thing with 400-grit, and then with 600-grit sandpaper.
On the half-sanded and the fully sanded top you can see where the bridge was, as there are deep tear-outs there. Probably I didn't heat it up enough. In any case, went over with some wood filler I had around, and the colour matched the top, so it came out nice enough.
After the top being finished, it was time for a thorough cleaning of the body, including sides and back, to clean it from the dust (generated while sanding) and the dirt accumulated over the years. After cleaning (and knowing how much work sanding the top was, adding the fact that the sides are not easily sanded with an orbital sander), I have decided that back and sides will only receive light sanding with fine sandpaper, touchups on dents with nail polish, and additional buffing and polishing. But that will come later, after the bridge is glued on and the top is being finished.
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