Post by DarKnight on Sept 9, 2007 13:00:02 GMT -5
Okay... Here is the deal... I salvaged this acoustic from our attic last winter... It was badly damaged cos of moisture, varying temperature and somebody almost had snapped the neck off the body... It is made of plywood somewhere in the 80's...
If I recall right it wasn't expensive(no brand), so I just thought to experiment with it and see if I could make it better. It was strung with steel string, which may have warped the neck... Brings up the question whether there is truss rod or not... It is very light guitar, so I suggest there prolly isn't one...
So I began the project by fixin the neck which had broken from the dovetail joint. Fretboard obviously glued to the soundboard - it lifted a part of the soundboard from the bracing when it broke. Fixed it with glue and two wood screws which repaired broken joint effectively. Atleast it seems to be solid and guitar keeps in tune.
It was also missing the nut and the bridge - dunno where they went... Bridge is built from birch and a steel rod in which I filed grooves for the strings. It is not compensated in any way, but intonation still seems pretty good - luck is. Nut is made same way and it seems to work like a charm... Action is bit high, but playable... Chording is the way with this little baby. High action is explained partly by neck bowing too much because of the way it was stored all those years... Too bad...
Next I became guitarnut(tm) and thought to experiment with painting and woodworking in a miniature scale. It really gave me valuable experience considering that I'm planning to build electric guitar. So I doodled around by cutting different shapes from thin wood with small saw... I came up with "snake-theme" where the snake is that thing on the peghead...
So I cut some other pieces which I would see acting like a "pattern" on the snakes skin... Anyhow I didn't want to make sound board too stiff, so I made only a few... Glued them to the board and peghead.. peghead was just a rectangle, so I spiced it up a bit with some round shapes and made it wider... Then rest was about painting the thing... I thought chocolatebrown and silver would be rather nice looking combination.. So did some stripes on the back and fake-inlays to the neck... and some lacuer and that's it!
Strung her up with nylons (tied the ends to small beads, so they'll hold in the tailpiece) and tuned up. Had a great time. Though it could have gone better.. this all was done in few days... but it was mostly experimentin... Dunno if this explanation belongs to luthier section... I'll throw this text there if needed... Let me know... Here are the pictures:
atleast it's pretty on the wall
Dark
ps. frontside lower bout somehow reminds me of those nasty mushrooms in the super mario
If I recall right it wasn't expensive(no brand), so I just thought to experiment with it and see if I could make it better. It was strung with steel string, which may have warped the neck... Brings up the question whether there is truss rod or not... It is very light guitar, so I suggest there prolly isn't one...
So I began the project by fixin the neck which had broken from the dovetail joint. Fretboard obviously glued to the soundboard - it lifted a part of the soundboard from the bracing when it broke. Fixed it with glue and two wood screws which repaired broken joint effectively. Atleast it seems to be solid and guitar keeps in tune.
It was also missing the nut and the bridge - dunno where they went... Bridge is built from birch and a steel rod in which I filed grooves for the strings. It is not compensated in any way, but intonation still seems pretty good - luck is. Nut is made same way and it seems to work like a charm... Action is bit high, but playable... Chording is the way with this little baby. High action is explained partly by neck bowing too much because of the way it was stored all those years... Too bad...
Next I became guitarnut(tm) and thought to experiment with painting and woodworking in a miniature scale. It really gave me valuable experience considering that I'm planning to build electric guitar. So I doodled around by cutting different shapes from thin wood with small saw... I came up with "snake-theme" where the snake is that thing on the peghead...
So I cut some other pieces which I would see acting like a "pattern" on the snakes skin... Anyhow I didn't want to make sound board too stiff, so I made only a few... Glued them to the board and peghead.. peghead was just a rectangle, so I spiced it up a bit with some round shapes and made it wider... Then rest was about painting the thing... I thought chocolatebrown and silver would be rather nice looking combination.. So did some stripes on the back and fake-inlays to the neck... and some lacuer and that's it!
Strung her up with nylons (tied the ends to small beads, so they'll hold in the tailpiece) and tuned up. Had a great time. Though it could have gone better.. this all was done in few days... but it was mostly experimentin... Dunno if this explanation belongs to luthier section... I'll throw this text there if needed... Let me know... Here are the pictures:
atleast it's pretty on the wall
Dark
ps. frontside lower bout somehow reminds me of those nasty mushrooms in the super mario