This repair came in about a year ago and was posted to the web page but I figured a more in depth write up might interest some out there.
The guitar was in rough shape to say the least when it was brought in. The finish was cracked like a car windshield after it has hit a moose, the bridge and soundboard was warped and lifting, and after spending many years stored in an attic the wood was dried out and the neck was bowed.
The owner had taken it someplace else the year before only to be told it wasn't worth fixing and they should just get a new guitar. They brought it to me after hearing about other old guitars I've rescued from a trip to the dumpster. I looked it over and asked them what they were looking for out of the repair, a full restore or bring it back to playable but still honestly showing its age. I was secretly hoping they wanted the later. When their response was they wanted to be able to play it again I worked up an estimate.
The first order of business was to take the strings off and start cleaning and conditioning it. I use a special blend of lemon oil to rehydrate the wood and thus guitar drank it up like a camel after a month in the Sahara. The next step was to remove the bridge as it would need to be flattened and reglued to bring the action to reasonable. The sound board also needed to be brought down about a half inch to make it flat.
I started steaming the underside of the sound board and using a purpose built windless clamp consisting of 2 2x3s some rope and a section of 1x4 to squeeze the section of the soundboard under the bridge back down. This required repeated steam/clamp steps to bring it in line. Each repetition required the guitar to remain in the clamps for 24 hours so it was not a quick process.
The neck was then straightened and luckily it had a functioning truss rod and then the frets were leveled, recrowned, and polished. The bridge was steamed and clamped to a level piece of marble I keep in my shop just for that purpose while I cut a new bridge saddle and nut out of bone.
Once everything was once again flat the bridge was reglued onto the soundboard with hyde glue and a bridge Dr was installed to keep things from lifting in the future. After all the glue was dry the guitar was restring and tried out.
The years of neglect hadn't hurt the sound as it was one of the sweetest sounding acoustics I've ever had the pleasure of working on and rehydrating the wood had done wonders on its appearance.
Mike Bouford
MB Studios
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