Guitar restoration - Part 14 - The failure
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, and loud. So it is worth continuing to work on it.
After playing a couple of songs on it my little girl joined us with her small ukulele, which means that she really considers this as a fully grown guitar. That says a lot.
My wife also liked the guitar, but commented that it doesn't have side dots as fret markers, which is bad. So my next assignment was given.
This seemed like an easy task, drill some small holes on the side, fill them with something (e.g. toothpicks) and sand it flat. Unfortunately toothpicks aren't really different in colour from the guitar side, so the side dots being small and similar in colour weren't really visible. So I decided to paint them black. I had some dye, which I applied carefully in a single spot on one of the toothpicks (unfinished at the moment), and the black ran through the toothpicks, and also into the fretboard side, with small lines running around the dot. Quickly cleared what I could, and painted the rest of the dots with a small junior brush, which was almost dry, but worked well enough to only paint the dots. After doing all of the dots with that, I covered them with a drop of superglue as a finish, and sanded smooth. The dots aren't perfect, but they are visible, and should do the job. Next time I'll be careful to stain the toothpicks and wait for them to dry before putting them in the holes drilled.
I have first started sanding, sanded the top once more, cleaned the bridge area, taped off the "new" bridge location, and started fixing the finish under the old bridge location, which was unfinished, and now became visible as the bridge was moved. This isn't an easy task, as I couldn't completely hide that "scar" from the guitar, unless I sanded down all the finish and started the finishing all over again. I didn't want to do that, so I covered the problematic areas with glue (for the tear-outs), finished them with BLO, left it dry 24 hours, another layer of BLO, another 24 hours, then shellac in a couple of sessions, along with the rest of the top. Then wet-sanded with olive oil, then another sessions of shellac.
And this was enough to spend the weekend with, and the clamps have arrived today, ready to glue the bridge again (of course after cleaning under the new bridge location and probably a session of buffing the top).
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, and loud. So it is worth continuing to work on it.
After playing a couple of songs on it my little girl joined us with her small ukulele, which means that she really considers this as a fully grown guitar. That says a lot.
My wife also liked the guitar, but commented that it doesn't have side dots as fret markers, which is bad. So my next assignment was given.
This seemed like an easy task, drill some small holes on the side, fill them with something (e.g. toothpicks) and sand it flat. Unfortunately toothpicks aren't really different in colour from the guitar side, so the side dots being small and similar in colour weren't really visible. So I decided to paint them black. I had some dye, which I applied carefully in a single spot on one of the toothpicks (unfinished at the moment), and the black ran through the toothpicks, and also into the fretboard side, with small lines running around the dot. Quickly cleared what I could, and painted the rest of the dots with a small junior brush, which was almost dry, but worked well enough to only paint the dots. After doing all of the dots with that, I covered them with a drop of superglue as a finish, and sanded smooth. The dots aren't perfect, but they are visible, and should do the job. Next time I'll be careful to stain the toothpicks and wait for them to dry before putting them in the holes drilled.
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| The side dots |
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| The old and the new bridge location, and the shiny finish |
And this was enough to spend the weekend with, and the clamps have arrived today, ready to glue the bridge again (of course after cleaning under the new bridge location and probably a session of buffing the top).
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