Further work on the guitar project

You may remember the work I did earlier with a friend on his flea market $3 special 12 string Guitar project ? There was some broken or loose ribs under causing the top to caved in under the stress of the strings. Well after a while our reglued job on the ribs failed and the bridge is once more pulling out, so time for a more drastic approach.

The bridge pulling out caused by the failure of the ribs under the soundboard.

My friend Mark carefully cutting around the side purfling in preparation to unglued the bottom.

Then it was a matter of applying heat and steam on the side to remove the plastic purfling.

Which was then removed with a chisel 

Once completely removed we applied the heat to the back, 

we now have access to the sides of the back. 

The back removed, yes it was a bit messy, it is a plywood bottom, but we did it. 

Just keep in mind its a $3 guitar and we are strict amateurs :-)

With the bottom of the top exposed we can now assess the damages. Someone drilled thru the braces in an attempt to bolt down the bridge. Failed! Not only is the bridge still pulling out, the brace has cracked and is becoming unglued, causing the top to sag under pressures and making matter worse.

The good news is, the brace was easy to separate from the top. Now its time to make new braces.
Hopefully we can get the the top flat again.

The guitar project

While I am working on my plane till project, a old friend of mine dropped in with this guitar in parts. Its a cheap Korean made guitar from the late 70s (we think) which he picked up at a flea market for $3. Why so cheap? A few braces are broken, the bridge is removed (poorly with damages) the fret buzzed, the tuners are removed and the nut need replacing. The neck had been previously reset but poorly. Most of the parts are there and we scrounge around to find the missing bits.


He is a musician, I am a woodworker, so we thought it would be a neat project to try to turn it back into a playable instrument.  First order of business was to removed the neck. That was fun, took a lot of heat, steam to get it out but we succeed. Next we assessed the broken ribs, and figured that we could fixed them from inside without removing the top (phew) so I first made 4 cam clamps for this job. That in itself was another fun and quick project.

Then we re-glued the neck, but we discovered a hump in the neck after ward and the neck did not seat quite properly.

Either we put too much glue and it pooled at the bottom of the dovetail or our clamping arrangement left something to be desired!. Off the neck came back out. That hide glue is like magic stuff, fully reversible.


Cut a new nut and installed it. Oh did I mentioned that this is a 12 strings guitar? Heck of a lot more complicated to cut our teeth in (puns intended) but heh, that's what we got.

Next we rehearsed our clamping choreography and tried again, this time we figured out that we had to make a thin shim under the neck to make it flat. Bandsaw and handplanes to the rescue.

Truss rod was tweaked after to make our neck straight.

We temporally installed the bridge back on (tape and strings pegs in) put in the two outer string on to check our alignment and action.  So far so good, we then glued on the bridge using a liberal amount of hide glue to make up for the missing wood under the bridge.

The strings were then installed, and we ran into a few snags. The tuning pegs on this cheap guitar are not metal but plastic with a nickel plating on them, we broke two trying to tuned it grrr.
Will have to find new tuners or salvage parts to repair them. That would make it a lot easier to tuned than by using vice grip pliers on the stem :-)

Now we wait a few days to let it acclimatized to the stress of those 12 strings and see what happens
There is a tremendous amount of pull exercised by these strings.
The action look good, can't wait to hear it come alive again.
Next step, a good old Nova Scotia kitchen party :-)

Full disclosure, a luthier I am not, just a woodworker.  We are reading books to figured it out as we go. So if you are a luthier, try not to laugh to hard :-)