Fender Stratocaster

This is a genuine American Fender Stratocaster, with an unhappy finish. It looks like someone has covered it in stickers, and then removed them with sandpaper. It's another guitar that belongs to our friend John from the most excellent Straits Fish & Chip shop here in Sheringham.

4 hours with wet & dry, from 1500 to 2500, followed by Farecla G3 & G10, plus a dose of Autoglym and it is right as rain.

Off Grid

My guitar work is now done in a self sufficient, low-carbon footprint workspace. Take a look at this...

Fryer John's Tanglewood

That's not a spelling mistake. John is not of the monastic persuasion, but runs the most excellent Fish & chip shop - Straits - here in Sheringham. His guitar is a Tanglewood 47B Sundance, which had taken an unfortunate excursion from the top of a TV. Not so much of a problem in itself, but the sharp deceleration onto a hard floor resulted in some bumps and bruises...

Nice big crack in the top, at the lower bout. Lots of finish missing

We think it had hit the ground head first, since there is another ding in the corner of the machine head

And then there is this little one:

Lots of reflections and a small gouge in the finish

So there we go. Some interesting little jobs!

A look around inside produces some interesting pictures:

Those dark lines, near the lining on the extreme left of the picture are a crack in the mahogany top

Since the lining to top joint is sound, we cannot achieve anything by attempting to re-glue that joint, and we must treat this repair as a split in the top. To stabilize this we can introduce some CA adhesive from the outside. But fisrt, we must devise a clamping scheme.

Top clamped

We'll use a spool clamp, with a spacer to cause the clamp to tip into the top rather than following the top contour as it would  normally be used. This means the clamp exerts pressure just inside the top to lining joint, effectively closing the crack. Cling film stops the clamp sticking to the glue.

Here is the 'after' shot, showing the glue has penetrated the joint:

Glue penetration through the crack in the top

Next, drop filling, scraping, and polishing

Drop filling almost complete

The peghead has also had a good dose of drop fill and polish:

and the lower bout repair is finished:

Jackson

The father of a school friend of mine was a Cabinet Maker from Ware, Herts who made Radio Controlled models, violins and guitars in his spare time. Here’s his first example – its a maple body, spruce to with a mahogany (?? Can’t see it for the flaking lacquer) neck & rosewood fingerboard.



It needs new topbracing, splits in the top repairing and the neck heel has started to delaminate. It’s going to get new purfling & binding in cherry red padauk, a rosewood bridge & fingerboard & new tuners

Roca

This is a classical guitar made in Spain by Alejandro Roca, possibly in the 1970’s – our only clue to it’s age is the telephone number on the label! We don’t know very much about this guitar but it has a sapele neck, back & ribs with a spruce soundboard.

It came to us in a state of neglect – there were various splits in the soundboard, loose soundboard/rib joints, missing tuner knobs but most importantly a large dent in the middle of the back, as you can see in the pictures.

Initially this dry old guitar spent several weeks in the workshop, re-hydrating. This resulted in many of the splits closing up. These were reglued, and work commenced pushing the dent into position using jacks from within the body, gluing into place. A small hole in the back was filled with a sliver of sapele.

To finish, the back was scraped flat & lacquered.

The guitar was provided with some replacement tuner pegs, stained to match the originals and a new bone nut & saddle. It is now playing again and is a useful member of the family.

Giannini Head Repair

I'm very proud of this one. Neighbour Kier had shut his beloved Giannini in a car door... The head was completely severed, but very fortunately had not been moved, touched or bodged since.

You can see it's broken across the weakest point, in the nut slot. I stripped the guitar down and clamped it to my bench, on a sash cramp. I made a fixture to keep the headstock in the right inclination, and was then able to bring the headstock to the neck with controlled clamping force.

Glue set, it was then a matter of repairing the finish.



Not completely invisible, but it's been playing again for more than 3 years now.

Precious

‘Precious’ was my first build. It is a dreadnought style guitar (looking a lot like an HD28), featuring:

• Indian rosewood back & ribs
• Spruce soundboard
• Mahogany neck
• Ebony fingerboard & pearl dots
• Rosewood peghead overlay
• Herringbone purfling & white binding
• Herringbone soundhole inlay
• Finished in clear waterbased lacquer
• Bone nut
• Ebony bridge & bone saddle
• D’Addario medium gauge strings
• Gotoh tuners

It has wonderful sustain, loud & strong tone... A little bassy, but then it is large & Rosewood.

Tom's OOO

My project for Tom's 18th was an OM style cutaway guitar, featuring:

• Mahogany back & ribs
• Spruce soundboard
• Mahogany neck
• Rosewood fingerboard
• pearl dots
• Rosewood pegheadoverlay
• BWB purfling & maple binding
• Abalone soundhole inlay
• Finished in clear water based lacquer over black stain
• Bone nut Ebony bridge & bone saddle
• D’Addario medium gauge strings
• Schaller tuners
• Schaller piezoelectric pickup

Skip Find Les Paul

This is a Les Paul style guitar that was a resurrected from a skip find. It's a nasty cheapo guitar that we found poking our of the NNDC skip in Sheringham, Norfolk. well work dragging out for a little project:

It has been extensively refurbished including:

• MOP fingerboard inlay 
• New humbuckers 
• New pickup mounts 
• Complete re-finish in black lacquer 

Future work for this guitar will include:

• Rebinding the body, peghead and fretboard 
• Inserting 'Ruby House Guitars' peghead logo 
• Repolish