265 RSW L1 Major Surgery Again Part 2 This is a good one

I pulled a little piece of binding a little bit loose here on the edge so ivory glued that and got that that's why this cloth is on there while that's drying I thought I might as well start fitting up this bridge I bought this bridge just off of ebay I was looking for and have anyone they didn't haven't have anyone but this was a very dark rosewood and I can dye this black I'm not so worried about the color as I was more than it looked the part you know it so many of these bridges just don't look like they belong at all this one kind of looks the part you know it's as close as I could find and it was only ten dollars so it's like it's a no brainer at that point so I just thought I'd show you here's the one that came with it and you know it's just it just doesn't look the part at all you know I mean it just isn't the right shape or size or anything at least this one kind of looks like an old Gibson bridge to a lot of you know to some degree and the the little adjusters are about the right size and so I think this is a much better fit that the feet on it don't quite fit the top so I'm working them down with some sandpaper when you see the sanding get all the way across see like it's not touching here and here yet then you know you got it and I'm sure I've said this before in videos but whenever I'm at fitting a an adjustable bridge of any type to the top whether its mandolin violin whatever I always put a little bit now I don't want you to go to extremes but I always put a little bit more pressure on the back side because the bridges are always walking and pulling forward so it's a you know it's just a good idea to have them fit where they just maybe a fraction of a hair you know past center that way in terms of vertical just that they're just leaning back just to slide them out then what I do after I do that and get it fitted pretty close I take a small file and I knock at a 45 these edges and I just I round them over just slightly I mean you really by looking at it you can't hardly tell it but you can feel it it's not near as sharp as this one this one here will almost cut you it's that sharp and you just round off that little corner a little bit now why would I do that because it'll leave less chance of leaving a mark on your top that looks pretty good this is the B string on this and the reason I know that because it's offset to the back just a little bit so this is the way it goes that really does look good it it looks like it's fitting on there really tight so that ought to work well now we'll just wait till this has a little more time to dry and we'll get the tuning keys on here and get her set up the camera cut off for some reason I'm not sure why and we're left off at but so I'm going to catch up here I'm talking about these rivets and these rivet holes the modern one has just two rivets the old ones used to have a rivet at four points on each tuning tuner so this one only has two and they're flush their way out pretty flush that you can they stick up a little bit but not enough to make a difference the old ones used to because the rivets were much bigger they actually cut holes around each you know for each rivet around each post so that's why there's so many more holes there I'm not gonna fill the rivet holes I'm only gonna fill the screw holes just thought I'd show you that I did fill all the holes and I used toothpicks the last time I did this and and of course those holes were even bigger than these although these took a lot of toothpicks as well someone said well you should use something you know bigger like you know some people said they use chopsticks they use different things now you know and I've used a lot of different things over the years to I've got some real tiny dowels in the other room that I could use but I go back to toothpicks now here's why because almost never are these holes exactly round if they were exactly round than a dowel of the exact size would be the easy way to fill it but these holes are almost always elongated weird shapes some of them are l-shaped some you know I mean they're in every kind of configuration you can imagine and the thing about the toothpicks is that's failsafe there's you jam them down in the hole break it off jam it down in the hole break it off jam it now and you keep jamming them in there till it's tighter than a bull's buttered fly time and you can just jam as many toothpicks as you want and it will get just as tight to the point to the point where I'm actually the last ones I put in and I'm not I'm just a demonstrating the last ones I put in I actually drive in with the end of the screwdriver so these are in there very tight lots of glue will never come out just as a brief review these are the tuners that came with the guitar and hopefully you can see that they're really cheap ones you know these this is one piece of metal and then the flaps are folded up and bent over these things here so they're really cheaply made that work and they're fine I mean for a cheap guitar and everything but they're really cheap made these while these are not fancy at all these are just a lot better tuner overall the way they're made but they do fit the style of the guitar much better also and that's the main thing I wish I had the ferals for this it does look like maybe this head little Ferrell's on it at one time maybe I can't even really tell in a place or to it for sure looks like it but the rest of them and I'd say three of them look like they had Farrell's on them the rest of them don't so I don't really know if it ever did or didn't you well that takes care of that with the exception of the whiteness of this I really like these I think they're very good they're just perfect it's a shame they don't come in a little bit of an off white to match the old bindings that would make more sense but you know that's just the way it is they fit the holes really tightly so there's really not much need for a ferrule those real skinny Farrell's could probably fit down in there but I don't have any of them so we can't go that route and I'm not the guy that's going to drill it out and put these in there I think I'll just go ahead and fill these holes they probably can use it also they're probably pretty wild out that over the years they do that there's a little bit of corrosion on the backside of this you know a little more than just patina I think I'm going to go ahead and knock a little bit of that off with with this semi chrome polished not going to try to make it look brand new look a little bit better like I said I don't want to make it look brand new just trying to get rid of the stuff that's really dirty looking there's also a slight bend in this and I don't think it's normal but I'm not sure I want to deal with that I don't know I don't think I want to deal with that it's not that bad number one if it was bigger I'd probably would well you know it just looks cared-for now again it doesn't look like somebody completely refinished it or something it just looks clean but yet worn you know that's the kind of look I'm going for I never try to make them look like it's been totally restored or something these are Phillips head screws which I doubt are correct for this instrument off-camera I already filled these holes and then read rill them so everything's good on that my friend jeff bradshaw always says start them all before you tighten any it's not a bad practice on most things Jeff was gone from YouTube there for most of the year seems like he's been busy with other things but he seems to be back again I'm glad to see him back he kind of helped me get going here at the beginning gave me a lot of pointers when tightening down these kinds of screws you go to they get good and snug in just a fraction of a turn past that and you're good no point and keep spinning because you just strip them out well let's see what it looks like with some strings on it another thing that I like to do whenever you start putting strings on these with these new bridges you know I've already showed you how I leveled the bottom feed and route relative those off but all the edges on this are very sharp so I'm just gonna take this apart before I do that I have it set so this is the treble side so I'll just put a tee here and this is the bass side so I'll put a B over here and I know which way this goes based on the way it's cut so anyway I'm just going to take and knock off these sharp corners if your hand brushes up against it you just don't feel it that way it just feels really sharp that feels better this has got some sharp sharpness to it to this piece you know I'm used to making these saddles for out of deer antler and I do the same thing on them I knock off all these corners to get rid of all the sharpness yes this could be made out of deer antler I know that'll be the next question I'm not gonna do that just because of tradition on this one yeah yes I think it probably would improve the sound of it if we did do that but I'm not going to do it plus it just takes quite a while to make a custom one the ones I make are all standard for the mandolin and it would be a longer process to make one for the guitar just because it would all be hand done where I don't have any setup sport that feels good okay there's the treble side so this goes on like this and let's go on from there someone had the right idea when they cut these pins off but execution is everything and you can see how sharp and jagged these are on the ends I'm going to round them all off so that if they do hit the top here they won't scratch it up like they've been scratching it up here I'm also going to try to see how long I need to make them if I can kind of tell that by how far it sticks through here see if we can even get one in there there it goes now the length is about right so I'm gonna I'm gonna say the length is okay I am going to round them off though not gonna leave these jagged edges sticking down I could do this on a sander these are plastic so if they filed pretty easy and that sander would eat them up pretty fast well I've already noticed something that I'm disappointed with the they turned backwards compared to the new modern tuners these turn backwards now the old ones did not turn backwards either I'm just saying that these in this vintage style the reproduction of it they turn backwards now you could say well you've got them on the wrong side you turn them over there and then they'll turn the right way that's true but that throws the where these where the buttons are off it puts the buttons way up here higher on the peghead they don't look right everything looks wrong and it doesn't line up back here correctly where the old scar is it's just the way they made them they you know the old ones were with the post above the worm gear and that's what these are these the the post is above the worm gear and the old ones were like that but you know it's just one of those deals where it's just short cutting everything to death and the quality is just crap these days so you know you get what you get it sort of looks the part it just doesn't really work the part if you will I mean it's certainly workable and usable this way it's just disappointing get this all strung up I'll line this all up and then maybe put little tiny grooves in this to hold the strings I don't have any grooves in there right now but I don't want to put them in there until I get everything lined up action wise I'm impressed this is just about the right height and everything it's gonna be just about perfect so I'll get all the strings on here and we'll show you what that looks like when I get down to doing things like this I'll set the strings and make two marks and then I just go across and check all the marks and see if they're all about the same and they look good I look up here to see if they're about the right width they look good the whole thing can maybe move that way just a hair and that caused that one to move a little bit on me there unfortunately anyway once I get them about right then I just draw take a fine pencil and draw on both sides of the string [Laughter] and then I just take it off and then I take a three-cornered file and I you know this is coming from the back and so I you know I want to have the angle up and I just lightly cut a cut across there just lightly and I don't want to cut a very deep groove I just want a little bit of a groove these bigger strings you have to do a little bit more maybe follow it out just a little bit but I'm not trying to go very deep deep is the thing I don't want to do I just want it enough to hold the string and I always want it at an angle up and I'm exaggerating but I always want it up at an angle like this that way the front edge is the last place the string touches if it's not the last place it touches it can vibrate in there and cause a problem those are those mystery buzzes that people bring to me and they can't find a lot of times that's where they are at is in the saddle that's pretty close let me tune her up and check the intonation and we'll show you what it sounds like I know you can't see what I'm doing here with the tuner but I just thought I'd give you a refresher on intonation when you you've noted open and you get it as close as you can get to dead center on your tuner and then you note it closed at the twelfth fret and it's way sharp it's 30 s 20 plus cents sharp what that means is from here to here is too short from here to here is too short sharp is short meaning that the string is too short so you need to move the bridge back now when you get close very little movement is all you need here I'm going to need maybe a sixteenth of an inch or more it and then you have to check it again and you just have to keep doing that to get it right so now we'll check it again you got it right on the money we're still sharp when you check this you want to be careful that you're not bending your string up or down just as lightly and straight down as you can touch it yeah I'm still almost 20 cent well about 20 cents sharp so that means that's still too short got to bring it back some more it's bouncing around ten cents sharp so that still means it's short getting closer though [Music] now five cents are so sharp still sharp that's good though because every bit every time we move this back that raises this tail thing up and there gets gives me more clearance right here which I'm real happy about focus focus camera there you go I think intently it keeps fuzzing out on that but anyway you guys think you can see there's a clearance there now which is good so moving it back is actually a good thing in this case you can see I'm back further than where it used to be and that's you know that's just too bad somebody just didn't have it in the right place that's all anyway that's kind of common bridges work forward to over time so you have to keep pulling them back over time right on the money Sonny a hair flat so what that means is this side is too far back when it's flat its far back so you want to move it forward and so I'm trying to keep this one where it's at and move this this edge just a little bit it doesn't have to go very far though because it's not far off so let's check that and see if we've improved it [Music] still a hair flat let's double check that base side right on the money okay so this side still needs to go forward a little bit without moving the base side might help a little bit check it again [Music] right on the money so that's about as good as you're going to get it on the intonation you can just really only intonate these outer two strings the only way you can intonate the middle strings is by compensating the the bridge will check it to see how far they are off if there's any of them that are really far off will do something but I don't think that's gonna be the case here generally it's not so I'll finish tuning her up and show you what it sounds like I've got her up to tune and the action is really really low I've got here's my 80,000 and that's what I like to set it to and it's picking it up pretty good so it's only probably around 65 70 thousands right now so we're gonna raise that up it is buzzing just a little bit right in here in order to raise this up I'm going to go ahead and loosen the strings you don't have to loosen them all the way but I'm gonna loosen them some in order to raise this up and in this particular case I'm probably going to have to use the pliers to raise it I can't it's too tight to turn by hand and I try to get a hold of this very carefully these pliers have teeth on them to grab the teeth on the ring that's why I choose them so they don't slide and then I just rotate it so that it's raising this up keep in mind each one of these little terms that I'm making is only about an eighth of a turn or so this will also be a good thing to get the tailpiece up off the top a little bit more it's not touching now but this will just make it better now we'll double-check it with our gauge and see where we're at at the 12th fret that's pretty darn close right there might even be just a hair high it might just be a hair over the 80 and this is still right tied on 80 let's so let's check the tuning and see if it buzzes that's the main thing [Music] got a nice sound real nice sound for an old guitar like this [Music] like it friends if I was putting out one of those very highly produced videos like you see on some of the big channels right about now you'd go you'd hear the glass break and you'd go all something happen well it did and the glass broke you know I want to say this guitar is fixed and it's ready to go and the odds are it would probably last quite a long time just like I have it here it plays good it sounds good etc and so forth but I'm not satisfied as I was stringing it up bring it up to pitch this top I could just tell was giving you could hear it creaking cracking popping all kinds of stuff as the pressure was applied to the strings way more than I should have heard then as I am getting it up to pretty close to full pitch this crack is letting go again you can tell so the tight bond isn't really holding it in this particular case and the reason I feel is that it was glued already and glue doesn't stick to glue very well etc and so forth so bottom line is I could send this back to the customer and the way it is and more than likely I wouldn't have a very happy customer after a while I've let it sit here in the shop for several days I've already talked to the customer and he's agreed that I should just go ahead and open it up and fix it Wow and I really really hate to do that I really do this is this back you can look at it you see now it's rubbed and all that it's you know it's war but if you look at the crack I mean there is no crack that there's no binding on the back but you can tell it's never been off that back has never been off that guitar you can see the fine line in there in places but the back itself has never been off you know and it's never even been cracked anywhere that I can see it doesn't look like it's even been repaired well the bottom line is I have to find a way to open that up and boy I hate to do that because really what you're doing is you're breaking a perfectly good joint I mean you're just breaking it and you try to do as good as you can and of course I will but I just I just dread it and that's part of the reason it's been sitting in the shop here just what's it's been tuned up and you know it's holding tuned relatively well but I still just don't trust it I'm really gonna have to take it apart get in there clean the joint out put some good cleats across there etc etc I always say you need cleats whatever the joint is under stress well those joint is definitely under stress if there's no stress there you know to speak of then the cleats aren't really gonna do you much good I got a comment on one of my older videos about a guitar just like this where I took the back off of it and I don't remember the title of the video at the moment but I'm sure you've all seen it he made the comment it is on the video that you can take that back off with that high glue much easier if you use alcohol well wouldn't you know I'm just getting ready to take this off this morning and to be perfectly honest with you I kind of forgot about the comment cuz I get so many comments and I'm doing so many things I forgot to relate it to to this guitar as I'm getting ready to work on it well would you not know just about the moment I'm ready to stick the knife in this thing that gentleman calls me all the way from France I would have probably already had the knife in there heading that call but anyway so I you know I told him I said well how do I get the alcohol in that joint if the joints that tight you know he says a little syringe and I'm going well I can't even get a syringe in this joint this joint is perfectly 100% tight he said well you will have to open it up a little bit but once you can get it open up a little bit then you know you get the alcohol in there and it will do wonders he says you will hear it actually crystallizing and being in whatever and it'll just come loose hey it's worth a shot he says you have to use they have a specific kind alcohol that they use and I asked him I said well I don't know that I have that kind of alcohol I said I've got denatured alcohol and I've got just isopropyl alcohol and he says well it has to be a 90 plus percent alcohol so you know it's close to a hundred percent as possible so I've got some isopropyl that's gotten over 90 percent rating and I'm gonna try that and see cuz I don't know what the denatured alcohol rating is I have no idea but anyway we're gonna give that a shot here and see if alcohol does anything on this high glue that would just be super awesome if it would just get rid of that joint where I don't have to pry it open cuz when you pried open you don't know what you're gonna get I mean you could you can easily crack the wood you know and so if the alcohol would dissolve the glue and just pop it open that would just be like that so let's give it a shot and see what happens all right some of you might wonder what would be the process for getting this back opened up well here's my thought process I don't generally want to open it along this side you know as the first opening because this you know right-handed player that's the thing you're gonna be looking at all the time so if you're gonna have to make a mark put it somewhere where you won't see it around the tail end is a good place in one regard but then it's a bad place to start in another regarding two reasons on this guitar number one there's a seam right there and you're just gonna make that seam get worse and the tail blocks there so it's harder to get something in there because it's glued and bigger surface area this neck heel is not a good place to start because you can break that off real easy and then there's a lot of glute up area here so if we can't do any of this hair here basically from from here to here then the only place is left is down here and so that's where I'm looking I'm looking for a place that just might possibly be loose but I don't see anything to be perfectly honest with you but I'm gonna choose right about here I can see and one of the main reasons I'm choosing this is I can see the scene very clearly I'm going to try to get a razor blade in that crack it's I can already tell it's going to be an ugly one because you can see the finish cracking is I'm as I'm putting pressure on that crack it's just not gonna want to do it so what I'm trying to do here one of my wonderful viewers sent me these little bottles with the little tiny needle on it it's almost as Tiny as a syringe and I'm just going to now that I just poked my knife blade in there I'm just gonna put alcohol on there and see if by chance it will do something to that glue I doubt it just because I don't have very bit much of an opening there but you never know might get lucky and you know he says it works really good the alcohol doesn't seem to be affecting the old finish in E which is wonderful and I'll just keep it soaked down for a little while and I'm seeing that the alcohol seems to be penetrating that crack I don't know if you can see it on camera or not but the alcohol does actually seem like it's finding a way down in that crack because it dries up right on the crack line if I don't put too much there it's hard not to put too much there it runs out so easily but if I can get just a little bit there you can see it kind of going down in there I'm thinking maybe it'll work just gonna let that set in the soak and keep putting alcohol on it for the next 10 minutes or so just to see what happens now I don't figure there's any real reason to get in a hurry or anything I've been working this knife blade in this same spot now for 10 minutes or so keep putting the alcohol in here can't say as I've really seen anything happen yet I really would like to see something happen because that would be awesome but at the moment I just don't see anything going on the alcohol is soaked in there because as I work the blade in there I can see the alcohol squishing around in the wood I keep working it in there you know thinking that maybe it's gonna eventually soften it in front of it or back of it or something and it's gonna start coming loose but so far nothing it's one of those deals where maybe I'm just not holding my mouth right you know you can see it's squished in there maybe and it's holding it it's kind of supersaturated with it I would certainly think it would be about time for it to start turning loose here if it was going to turn loose and I don't expect it to hold back to come loose but I was expecting maybe the crack would open up just a little bit and I haven't seen even any sign of that so far I'm not gonna give up on it yet because I definitely want to find a way to do this better where I don't damage this at all well I'm having I would call it mixed results with this I know it's sort of working but I'm spending a ton of time on this the alcohol is not just making it instant like he's let it you know I I'm not saying that's what he said exactly but I think he said it was pretty pretty quick you know and it's not quick at all at least not in this case I've spent quite a long time on this I soaked it and soaked it and soaked it and soaked it and soaked it and then I went to lunch you know let it soak for a while came back I didn't really notice any difference in the cracks I just started more or less forcing the knife down in there actually I heated this little knife first and forced it in there pretty far that started the crack moving a little bit I've been putting more alcohol in there and more or less manhandling it forcing it to open really it's not opening on its own if you will I'd say it's probably helping a little the only thing that's I can say you positive right now is it does look like it's following the crack really well it doesn't look like it's varying off sometimes it will do that it'll it'll splinter off or split but right now it does look like it's following the exact crack of the top there which is good I'm just soaking the alcohol down in there the alcohol is actually soaking into the crack about this far ahead of me and I'm just trying to work this large flat really thin blade that direction we'll just have to keep at it see how it works but you know I'm not so sure it's a magic bullet but on the other hand I'm gonna try to continue on and take the whole top off with this method and see if it's a clean removal if it's a clean removal that's a big plus right there because most of the time they're not perfectly clean just when I was getting a little more comfortable and confident with this process I think I wouldn't say disaster struck because it would happen the other way too but it kind of left the seam here and it started going into the side which does happen so you got to be careful with that so I stopped going this direction what I'm gonna have to do now is get above this and work my way back to it otherwise it's just going to continue to follow the grain line so I'll have to get above it and work my way that way it just never quits you do want to keep the alcohol wiped off there one place here where I didn't wipe it off it did eat into the finish a little bit there's no magic bullet here it seems like it does help a little bit but only very little in my opinion I really think I'd be just as far ahead or probably further along if I was heating the knife up real hot and sliding it in there so I don't know if I'm gonna continue doing this or not it's it's working but it's not working that great in the area here where it is working I thought it was real clean but I can see some tear out in there too so I don't even think it's doing all that clean of a job where it is working so I don't know we're just gonna have to back up five and punt here I think well friends to you it's just a mere second but for me it's been several days I had to put this on hold because of Christmas and other projects I had a recording project to do and if other things and I just didn't get back to it so I want to just kind of bring you up to where I feel like I'm at on this I've spent more than an hour trying to get this loose with the alcohol that's a new process I didn't charge the customer at all for that amount of time it's a new process I was trying it out and to see if it would work the fellow from France very nice fella I'm sure that he knows what he's talking about I'm not knocking him at all but it just doesn't work for me now it could be a couple of things it could be the kind of alcohol I'm using I'm using isopropyl alcohol I tried denatured alcohol also I have that here too and it's not doing the trick I mean it's sort of kind of working and I'm you know this little syringe is really nice it's very small needle as you can probably see they're very tiny needle and it's it gets it right down in the crack and all that so and you know that alcohol it spreads and it runs everywhere it's so thin so that's not the issue it's not getting it on there I'm getting it on there I don't know I'm just about to give up on the alcohol idea though and you know I I am positive that this has not been taken apart before this is the first time this has been taken apart so because of the age I'm almost guaranteeing that it is high glue you know it just is what it is it doesn't seem to be working for me I don't know why the only way I can justify it is I can't even get gravity to work half the time so there you go it's just one of them things so I'm going to go back to the hot knife method and we will start the clock now because I do know this method works and we will get this back off of here you know if I kept going with the alcohol you know if it took me more than an hour to do this much you know it's gonna be $1,000 time I get back of this thing off of here you know it's gonna be ridiculous so I got to get it off here fairly quickly and we're gonna change our tactics and give it a shot here we go you well we got the back off of there I quit filming it just because it eats up too much film but you know you just take your time to go around there for the most part it came apart really good ironically the worst place it looks to me like is right here where chipped up pretty good and that was the area that I started with the alcohol just to give you a comparative figure with the alcohol and again like I said I'm not knocking that process I'm just saying somehow it didn't seem to be working for me if you look at it about this much here was done with alcohol and that took me roughly an hour then I did the rest of this in 35 minutes so I did the whole rest of it in 35 minutes and yeah there's a little damage there but there was damage with alcohol was too so you know actually it came off pretty good how you can't hardly get these things apart like this without some damage it's just almost impossible I mean you probably could if you spent hours and hours and hours and hours but keep in mind I'm building at $80 an hour so I basically got this off of here for roughly $40 versus if it would have taken me eight hours the other way times 80 that's you know a lot of money six hundred and forty bucks you got to do what you got to do you'll suffer a little bit more damage by hurrying up a little bit but on the other hand I know how to fix damaged wood now that's the good news we got it apart the bad news is it's it's a tough fix it really is it ordinarily when you get these open like this okay it's easy to fix this one's not easy affects the the main crack that I'm wanting to fix is right along here and right along here and I mean they're right against the the brace I can see a crack along this one in here there's another bigger crack here this crack here won't be too bad to fix getting the tight bond in there it didn't work its way all the way through there you can see but it had already been glued with the high glue and the high glue has worked its way through the crack also tight bond just like most other glues don't stick to glue very well about the only glue that sticks to itself as well is you know CA glue otherwise for the most part glue doesn't suspect to be glue very well think on this a little bit because to be honest it's not an easy fix it's already got glue in the crack so it's almost impossible to clean the crack out if I do clean the crack out I'm gonna damage it more people just think oh it's so simple just do it well it's not simple you know if you think it's simple then you don't know what you're talking about it's just not simple if it had never been fixed before then to me it's simple I could do it wouldn't even think twice about it but because it's already been reglued and it's got glue in the crack now and the crack is so close to this brace where I can't really span the crack with cleats I don't know what I'm gonna do to fix it but I'm gonna figure it out I will find some way to fix it I'm making some cleats to go across the crack that's near the neck I'm making a one-inch long roughly because that's about how much room I have to work with and I say the bigger the better on this particularly because this cleat is going to go up here where there's a lot of stress that's right on both sides of the neck and there's a lot of stress on that neck so that joint there takes a lot of stress that's probably why it broke to begin with so we're gonna really cleat that heavily now that we have it apart here and we're gonna clamp that up good and make sure that the cleats fit that really well we've got about roughly a little bit more than a half an inch from this brace to the crack so therefore I'm making the cleat an inch long where it'll go almost to the touch this brace here and go up through there and I made it cleats out of spruce and it's very finely quarter-sawed spruce it you can see the grain lines running through it this way but that'll be those grain lines will be perpendicular to the top and that way they won't split again where if I put them in this way they would split this way they won't split sorry about the background noise Ron's in the other room making deer antler saddles the cleats i've got sitting here will fit in these two locations i've also taken a straightedge and scraped the top here to clean it up in to flatten and also the cleats match up really well I believe this is going to be very strong and then I'm going to take it back off to see how well the glue is making contact well I think I'm gonna take it back off it looks like it's making pretty good contact cuz it doesn't want to come off yeah that made a hundred percent contact there so it looks really good but just a teeny bit more glue on it just to make sure that it makes contact again you so that should hold those really well I put leather on this one this one already had leather on the clamp so that should really hold those very well I'm gonna let that glue set up after a couple hours and we'll take the clamps off meanwhile I'm going to I've already started devising an idea to work on these other parts here I've made myself a triangular embrace now this is triangular at the moment and it will still be trying either when I'm done but it'll be much smaller I'm just you know trying to figure out a way to get in here and glue this crack solid and I've also cut the grain lines so that this shouldn't split also the difference with this one is that this is a carved arch area here I want to span the whole thing with one piece of wood rather than I want to go this full length because that crack goes that full length and I want to tie it to this brace and I want to tie it to the top and it may take a lot of hand fitting to give it there you know I'm because this brace is carved at an angle I mean it's nothing simple on this it really isn't simple the brace itself is like a pyramid so I can't just lay something in there square and expect it to match up we'll have to carve this to fit this and the top both so I'm just kind of monkeying with it right now to see how long I need about right there should be long enough so we're gonna cut it off to get the extra length out of my way this will bend a little bit so I can flex it in there if I have to but I think what I'm going to do is carve the end off of it so I don't have to flex it too much you can probably see on the profile there how I'm thinning that down to match this curve under there it's better but still got a ways to go you that's really not looking too bad I'm gonna clean it up with some files and make it look smoother you know I just don't want it to look like somebody carved it with a pocketknife well I wouldn't admit to trying a bunch of different ideas on clamping this off-camera I think I have settled on this arrangement here I've got pads on the underside on the which would be the top well as a matter of fact I'll just show you you can see there's leather pads in all those locations I have leather pants taking up some of the slack here because this is sloped and so that the clamp wants to slide down this brace so these leather pads here kind of catch it about halfway on the brace and push the brace in and keep it from sliding any further it seems to be working pretty well this is a dry run I have not glued it yet so there's no time like the present let's glue it up you know I had to carve it in there like it spit and that's that's a compound angle because that braces looks good but you know sad thing is what well except for the thousand people watching it on video okay well this looks a little bit like a Rube Goldberg deal but you can see I have a lot of different things going in a lot of different directions there this weird piece of wood going across here is just so that I could put this little extra stick in here you can't really see it very good but this little prize stick is prying down on that brace to push it down just in one more spot there and the rest of it seems pretty tight it was just a little bit up right there it's it looks airtight all the way around so I think it's as good as it can be done you can see I've made another brace just like this one on this side this one's already glued in place I've got this one dry clamped in place it looks like it fits up really tight and I think that's the only way we're gonna fix those cracks that are right along those braces I don't think there's any other way to fix it not without taking the braces completely out and doing something else but that's just more destruction and create more problems think you can see how I've got this one all clamped up down in there there's a good amount of glue squeeze-out all through there it really looks very tight I think it's just about as good as it can be will Bob be ready to put the backpack on this thing just thought while we've got this thing open I'd point out a few things you can see I do have the second brace in there and I've tidied it all up I went through and really looked at it closed and you know I carved away a little bit more would you lighten it up and smoothed it off some and you know like there was a place or two where there was just the slightest you know air gap and so I took CA glue today which is the second day now it's drying overnight I wanted to give the other glue time to really set up good and then any little tiny air gap I filled it with CA glue so these braces are really tight in there now they don't there's no vibration or rattle I don't think the top will ever give again now at least not in those same two places the hole right here which I don't know why they drilled it in there but it is an actual hole it does go all the way through that you can see I mean I can plug that after I get it back together to but and I would also just point out that you can see that you know obvious very obvious it's just too long braces there was never any evidence of a ladder brace going across anywhere you can see that that there's absolutely no evidence that any other braces were made there as far as I can tell everything else inside is perfectly sound I'm not crazy about this neck joint up here you can see it's got a lot of air space in there and you know it solid it's tight and as the old adage goes if it ain't broke don't fix it so I don't think I'm gonna do anything with that it's held this long and I don't see any reason to feel like it won't hold again I think we're gonna call our good hands putting her back together well I did notice one more thing I actually saw this before and I'd forgotten about it and that is that this back has split here and it's the crack is opened up through here I can tell that someone has tried to fix it it's smooth all the way up to here but where this crack is opened up you can feel glue squeeze-out so somebody's already tried to reglue it it's been you know it was glued originally reglued re gluing it again is it's that old definition of insanity keep doing the same thing expecting a different result it's got to be fixed you know at the risk of making it worse I'm going to try to get the old glue out of there which I hate to do because it usually makes the crack wider and makes it look uglier but if you can get it back to bare wood it'll it'll hold much better I'm just taking the back edge of an exacto knife using it as a scraper lifting up typically pulls most of that out of there you can see it coming out and chunks the back edge of the exacto knife is very square and very kind of sharp in its own right and it makes a great scraper for things like this my hope is by doing it from the inside I won't make as big a mess on the outside it doesn't look too bad from the outside you can't really hardly tell it so far so that's good you yeah I can see it I can see it all the way up into here now so it's really going a long ways up in there that should work I've got the clamp attached here it's very simple you just attach it on both sides by screwing this down with the thumb screws and then this will tighten it up so you just start cranking it together and you can already see the glue squeeze-out it's already starting to come out and that really pulls it in tight all the way down through there you can see glue squeeze-out that's a very good way to do it I would imagine we'll see glue squeeze out on the other side sure enough and I had already cleaned that up so that's good sign that there's plenty blue in there much better chance of that holding now that I got in there and scraped that to bare wood and you know you can't be a hundred percent sure it's to bear wood but it's certainly better than just gluing it in there without even scraping it at all since we're this far into it and we've got it apart we might as well go ahead and cleat this joint since it's broke a couple of times it's obvious if it had never you know been reglued I probably wouldn't even bother cleaning it as you can see the rest of the joints fine past where the block is the block goes right in here so we'll start about here and go down and put maybe two or three small cleats well that should hold that it's just an added security there they were already stuck pretty good the glue was tacky and we'll just let that set for an hour and rest and then we'll clean those little patches up you babble them down and make them smaller you know you just don't want to leave clunky stuff inside your instrument and then I think then we really are ready to put it back together I've done a dry test fit and everything fits up pretty nice I might point out that this has a nail in this area right here it's pointed up and it also helps locate it boy it's a sharp one too it sticks up pretty high too looked at it really close and it seems to fit up pretty well I'm gonna be using tight bond original to put it back and some people will say immediately that that is stupid you shouldn't use that because this was glued with high glue and they say you can't take this apart high glue you can take apart but let me just say show you a close-up does the high glue look like it came apart real easy you know it didn't you know it chipped out all over the place it's better to even show it on this side you can see that it actually cut the wood more than it came loose on the glue and you know obviously the original was high glue and you can see that it basically cut the wood more than it actually unglued it so you know the the myth amount taken high blue apart is being easy isn't is a myth this is also a myth that you can't take this apart with with heat I can take this apart just as easy as high glue and probably easier now this is the original you can't use tight bond to and all those other things and get that apart with heat very easy but this stuff comes apart just fine with heat so you know if you don't like that all I can tell you is gold lump it because it works great the other thing about it is that it holds like iron you know and it will hold it very well and you won't have to worry about it coming loose in the meantime you I believe that'll do we'll let that set overnight get back at it tomorrow well my friends we've got her back together you can see I wiped down the whole thing with linseed oil and dried it back off so it just makes it look better it really does make it look better and I think it's good for these old finishes I don't know that it'll show up in the video but there's just eggshell all over this finish everywhere I mean there's not a place that doesn't have eggshell you know a little tiny fine cracks so I think wiping it down with the linseed oil helps that a lot keeps it from getting worse and I think it preserves the finish I had to use some filler along these edges you know just from you know you're really using a lot of force to get it apart because you can always tell it I don't care you know you know how good you do it you can tell it but it's done well it's done as well as I can do it and it doesn't look horrible it just you know is what it is and you know in this case I believe the back had to come off I don't think that was fixable through the sound hole at all because the cracks were right against those braces and I do think it's solid as it now you know I'm using the flesh I don't use every you should never let your fingernail do that you can tell it's just solid as break it's I've got a stringer back up and we'll play her for you it was another tough fight ball but we won you know it hurts me like crazy to take the backs off of these old instruments but on the other hand you got to do what you got to do and you just have to make it hurt for a little while but then it gets better you know and we're at the point where it's better in terms of the sound we'll just let you hear it first [Music] got a nice decent sound for the old-style we've got a different sound altogether than the flattop guitars [Music] it's a little on the subdued side compared to a couple I've heard and you some of you will say well that's your brace the way you put your bracing in there you know to fix that brace well it's not it yeah I heard it before I put the bracing in there and it's about the same it really didn't change it much at all if it changed it at all I don't hear it so it's got a decent sound it's just not as loud as some I've heard but it's not bad it's got a good sustain your you know regs it's solid now I didn't hear any popping cracking noises stringing it up that time where before I did well I mean it just kept making noises and weird stuff but now it's solid that top I would bet that top will last longer than the rest of it now I don't think that's gonna be an issue anymore when I get an old guitar like this in my hand I think of old tunes and Jimmy Rogers obviously was one of the best they call him some of them call him the father of the country music I think he was also known as the brakeman something like that because I believe he was a brakeman on a railroad line something like something to that line I don't listen I don't check out history guys so don't get on me if I'm wrong on that [Music] but anyway he wrote some cool songs and I don't think the YouTube cops will get on me on this one because a lot of these lines are borrowed from a lot of different songs er so hopefully I can get away with this one but you never know here we go it's not the last song he wrote he wrote it about the disease that killed him but it was among the last songs that he wrote the TV blues mags a girl's trying to make a fool out of me [Music] yeah my girls trying to make a fool out of me he's trying to make me believe and got the old TV got the TV blue when it rain down sorrow drained all over me long when it rained and sorrow rained all over me and now my body rattles like a train on the new Liz P I got the tea got the tea [Music] [Applause] the TV blues by the great late Jimmy Rogers hey you know it didn't turn out too bad you can still see those places that other people have worked on it and stuff and you know it's been banged around hey you know it's a hundred years old I hope I look this good at 100 years old I can make it to a hundred years old thank you for watching tell your friends be sure to click that subscribe button and be sure to ring that little bell after you click the subscribe button and you'll be notified of future videos that I put out kill a troll by clicking that thumbs up thank you very much for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rosa String Works

Views: 107,411

Keywords: Rosa String Works, instrument repair, Jerry Rosa, setup, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, violin, luthier, Martin, Gibson, Taylor, Alvarez, Kay, Bluegrass, music, hand carved, top crack, fret job, fretboard, handmade, L1, Remove back, repair top cracks, cleats

Id: nVh3CcIk8uI

Length: 63min 7sec (3787 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 05 2019