Skip navigation

Tag Archives: guitar repair

Markneukirchen guitar

This charming little guitar came into the workshop recently. The tightly arched back had come away from the linings in a couple of places at the edges of the upper bout and needed re-gluing. I also made a new saddle to replace the existing poorly-fitting piece of plastic and fitted a set of new strings. Otherwise, the guitar was in remarkably good condition for its age.

 
p1060324-edit
 

The label inside the guitar attributes it to Adolf Kessler junior of Markneukirchen, where it was probably made in the last part of the 19th century.

The Musical Instrument Museum in Markneukirchen has an on-line forum where I discovered that Adolf Kessler had founded a mail order business there in 1886, selling guitars and violins. I guess Kessler was a business man who marketed instruments made by some of the many craftsmen working in the town at the time. There’s a short BBC film about Markneukirchen and its 400 year history as a centre of musical instrument manufacture here.

 
p1060332
 

The rosette is made from decorative shapes of mother of pearl set into mastic.

 
p1060336
 

The ribs and back are of plain wood, perhaps maple, with a painted faux grain pattern under the varnish.

 
p1060329
 

The ebonised bridge is neatly carved into fleurs de lys at the ends, although the bass side has sustained some damage.

 
p1060335
 

The headstock carries Stauffer style tuning machines.

 
p1060326
 

Altogether an attractive little instrument – and I’m pleased to think that it is ready to make music again.

Advertisement

Razor blade scrapers

Among the treasure trove of information and tips and tricks at Frank Ford’s website Frets.com there’s a description of how to turn a single-edge razor blade into a miniature cabinet scraper for repairs of guitar finishes. Click here to read it.
 

DSC_7599

 

I thought that this was a really clever idea and immediately ordered a box of blades to try it out. Ford says that he draws the edge of the blade across a round piece of hard steel such as a screwdriver shank to create a fine hook just as one might finish a full size cabinet scraper.

I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t make it work. Maybe it was my technique or perhaps the steel of the blade had hardened during the sharpening process but despite repeated trials all I could produce was a ragged edge that scraped less well than a blade straight from the box.

 

The solution was first to grind off the bevelled edge of the blade;

 

DSC_7600

 

then to make the blade edge straight and square on a diamond stone;

 

DSC_7603

 

and finally to turn a hook with a burnisher in the usual way.

 

DSC_7606

 

These little scrapers work extremely well if you need to remove polish or varnish and they’re easy to re-sharpen.

 

DSC_7598

Simon Marty guitar repair

I’ve been a fan of Roland Chadwick’s music since hearing a performance of his trio for classical guitar, Letter from LA, a few years ago. So I was delighted when he contacted me about a guitar that needed some attention.

It was a fine instrument too – a cedar top classical guitar made by an Australian guitar maker, Simon Marty, in 1988. Quite apart from being 25 years old, it had worked hard for its living and the thin cedar top had developed some nasty cracks in the widest part of the lower bout. Some of the internal braces had come unglued too, and the guitar was more or less unplayable. To make matters worse, someone had tried to repair the cracks with superglue.

This is what it looked like after I had scraped away most of the superglue.

DSC_6804

With a hand through the soundhole, I could feel that the cracked part of the soundboard had become detached from a long transverse bar running across the instrument under the bridge. This explained the multiple little dowels, which were a previous attempt to fix the problem. The only thing to do was cut out the damaged wood and replace it.

DSC_6822

I also needed to replace some missing braces and re-glue several that were beginning to come unstuck. The difficulty here was that the braces, constructed out of balsa wood and carbon fibre, were very thin and it was almost impossible to position conventional clamps accurately enough to hold them in place without distortion. In the end, I solved the problem by making a few spring-loaded miniature go-bars. Wedged between the back of the guitar and the top of the brace, they kept everything in place while the glue cured.

DSC_6955

DSC_6957

 

After re-polishing, it was ready to perform again. All well worth the trouble because, despite its age, it’s an excellent guitar which produces a big warm sound.

 

DSC_6834

Guitar neck support

When working on the top of a guitar, I put the instrument on a carpet covered bench and prop up the neck on a block of wood that has a shallow, foam-lined curve cut into the top – as you can see in the photograph above. But I’ve recently learnt a better method. The device below, made out of 2 semi-circles of 18mm plywood, radius about 3 inches, adjusts itself automatically to the taper of the neck and supports it in a far more stable way.

The danger when using the simple block is that it tips over if the instrument is moved along its longitudinal axis. Of course, one can always clamp the block, but with the new neck cradle there’s no need. I’m grateful to Richard Nice (who invented the plane that I wrote about in my last post) for this bright idea.

Repairing a damaged soundboard

French polish isn’t the most hard-wearing finish for a guitar and it’s time consuming to apply. But it does have at least three enormous advantages. The first is that, in spite of the repetitive nature of the process, it’s remarkably enjoyable to do. The second is that you don’t need any kit: no spraygun, no mask, no nasty solvents – just a pad and a bottle of shellac. And the third is the fact that, if it does get damaged, it’s fairly easy to repair.

A cedar top classical guitar that I made a year or so ago got damaged the other day when it was treated like a Stratocaster. A young friend of its owner, keen to show off his skills as a rock musician, strummed it using a pick. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice the marks he was making on the soundboard until there was a comet’s tail of scratches on the treble side below the soundhole.

After unstringing the guitar, I steamed out the deeper gashes where the pick had dented the fibres of the wood and then re-polished the top. It’s not quite as good as new because, if you get the light right and look closely, you can just make a out a faint ghost of the original scratch. I’m not quite sure why but perhaps, where the pick reached the surface of the wood, it exposed slightly lighter coloured wood beneath.

I stupidly neglected to photograph the instrument before I started work, but here it is re-finished, re-strung and enjoying the spring sun while the polish hardens off.

%d bloggers like this: