294 RSW SJ200 Gibson Restoration Part 1

[Music] hello friends Jerry Rosa here in the Rosa's string Works workshop start not a new project today and this one's going to be a humdinger I think the Gibson company made some pretty classical guitars and I would say this has to fall in there somewhere it's an SJ 200 look at that baby start off at the peghead here and let you see that just kind of dull really dull look in there that's what the back of it looks like with the tuning keys let's see if it looks original yeah that looks original up there I don't well yeah I think it is I think that's all original it's what it looks like but it's kind of been abused up there it looks like a little bit and there's the inlay and the fret board based on pictures that I googled this looks pretty typical of the you know it looks pretty standard I think this is you know about as standard as they come where except where someone had put this extra pin card on this side and just ruined the finish and of course the floral pickguard the fancy pick guard that was down here is missing can we come up with something for that I don't know and then the back looks pretty darn nice actually the backs in pretty darn good shape for the age of this thing and I don't I didn't look up the serial number here to see the age of it you're welcome to do that it's a 1 4 2 6 2 you know just guessing it's probably 50s I'm just guessing just totally guessing 1950s just by looking at it it could be a little earlier it could be a little later but if I was guessing that's where I'd put it in the 50s and I am guessing so there you go and I'm sure I can look it up but whose time to do that when you got all these other instruments sitting here waiting to be worked up the bridge is coming off this sucker you can see that you can probably see under it there I don't even have to help you you can see under there see if this thing will focus on the bridge there you go mechanically it's a pretty good shape other than the bridge you know I don't see any real problems with the body or the binding or anything everything looks good and when I look down this I'd say the neck angle is absolutely perfect I mean as far as I can tell you know and I'm just looking right now I can't really tell for sure but right now it looks perfect I don't know if these were perfectly flat or if there was a slight bulge because there is a slight bulge in this so I don't know if they were built flat and this one has just pulled up or what I didn't research that part yet but we got quite a bit of work to do here but on the other hand you know I I just bit it at about five hour jobs so I'm hoping I can keep my part of it to down to around five hours something like that to help the guy out we're not gonna try to restore it like brand new we're just trying to make it look like it's been cared for yet again so the first thing I'm gonna do is see if I can improve the looks of this area right here and I'm gonna start off with our trusty lighter fluid and see what that does to it just rubbing it around there and see if it's does anything to this stuff that's on there and where it's pulled to finish up I I don't have a lot of hope for making that look better to be honest with you but we're just gonna see what we can do got the old Zippo lighter fluid there and I'm just gonna rub it around on this to see yeah yeah the problem is this part here is the original finish this part here has been pulled up the finish is just pulled up there's no finish there so odds are we're not gonna get anything getting improvement out of this not much funny and I'm just rubbing it around it at least clean it you know that if we start with that ah got it anyway that's just that's a shame cuz that's that's pretty much ruined right there and you know to put a pit guard back on it I guess that might be the best option you know make a match but I don't like that option because it's not the way it went came out from the factory but that might be what you have to do to cover up this mess now that somebody created it it's a sad thing because this guitar up in vintage condition is definitely in the three to four thousand dollar range minimum and I saw one listed that was in very good condition for sixty-five hundred so it's kind of a sad deal these bridge pins there's only three of them I doubt we'll ever find any three that match those so those will probably be history there's very little hope for fix of that really I don't know if there's any kind of a treatment I could do to this to blend it back I I can't really think there's gonna be much thought I just show you a close-up of the label there maybe we can even zoom in a little bit more and hold it still and that way you can look up the serial number yourself this end pin is sticking out and bugs me because it's sticking out so far it's not in there right at all and I don't think that's an original end pin for it because of the way it's sticking out so I'm gonna see if I can pull it out of there I've got these plastic jaw pliers here yeah yeah it's some kind of an aluminum end pin it's hollow not exactly sure what that's all about but but I don't think we'll be putting that back in because I don't think that's original to it well I think on this and ponder what I can maybe do that improve the looks of that I'm going to see if we can get this bridge started off of there I can see a repair that I hadn't noticed before somebody's there was a big hole gouged out here and somebody's put in a piece of wood to fill that in this that will show up very well but you can see this hole here has been repaired and there's a chip out between those two holes there's a chip out in here it's quite quite messed up there we might looks like maybe this has been repaired to what we might do is put a an overlay in this area here and read rill it and make it all look one way at least but anyway first thing we got to do is get these bolts out of here and there's I have yet to find any bolts that were too tight to just undo them by hand with a socket so I've got this little socket I'm going to reach in here and yeah that one's definitely loose there's any washer I don't feel a washer there just a just a nut so I feel [Music] we'll take a look up there with this and see if we can see there's a washer there yeah I think there is it's embedded in the wood very tiny little washer and it's just embedded in there here I got it out took the little screwdriver break the round on it there this is not an easy one for a couple of reasons first of all the bolt is in those bolts are still through there now and those bolts are covered with this pearl if I go digging on that I'm gonna bust that all out and maybe even bust the Pearl that's the first problem to get those bolts out and then the second problem is the way this bridge is made as you can see it's hollow all the way down to the guitar top so these little pieces here you look at them two times in a row and you're gonna break off I mean you can only glance at that otherwise you're gonna break it that's just about the way how fragile that is this grain going across this way it just wants to break why it's not already broke I don't know I would say that's just pure luck because of the way this is pulled up here that this didn't break yet in it it doesn't look like it's broken ëwhere but I can tell you for sure that's fragile as glass and actually maybe more fragile than glass and if you know anything about woodworking you know what I'm telling you is 100% true that that's just one to break big-time right across that because the grain runs this way through here and Wow that will be a miracle among miracles if we get that off without breaking it you can see I've got my trusty heater going here and the one that I made for removing bridges and I've got it set on three hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit so we're gonna let this thing heat up at the moment it's around two hundred and fifty degrees it doesn't take very long I've only had it on maybe a minute so it's heats up pretty fast it's up to 270 degrees now I'm afraid it's gonna mess with the pearl that's what I'm afraid of in this particular case but we got to do something and I you know I'm just doing the best I can with what I got to work with here I'm gonna start just seeing if I can get anything under here you know without really trying because prayin is gonna break it I just know for sure I'm just it's working in underneath the end of here that's that's a real good sign and we definitely goes under here no problem but under here yeah it's working under here too so that's a real good sign that's probably the reason that didn't break is because this end is both ends seem to be loose that's a real good thing so if we only have to take it loose in the middle that might keep it from breaking so we might have lucked out on that one I can tell you for sure that baby is tight on this front end it's getting very very very hot I know those pearl pieces are gonna want to come out of there next and I I don't really want them to come out but I don't know what to tell you on that it's just the way it is see if I can get the saddle out I don't know if the saddles gonna come out either the saddle almost looks like it almost looks like it's glass I'm hit it looks really hard and brittle I don't know anything about that saddle that's in there it it almost looks like mother-of-pearl all right I'm gonna have to get serious here and heat up this knife pushing for all I'm worth there and it's not wanting to go and I kind of melted to finish here in the front of it unfortunately it's afraid that was going to happen where it is tight it's very tight the rest of its loose so we lucked out on the unlined of the pieces that want to break I think we kind of lucked out there I think we did although this one here seems tight on there there it lifted made some progress right there we might actually have it loose but it sure doesn't feel like it wants to come up yet there we go there's some fibers or something holding it besides just the bolts there we go there we go there we go there we go you just witnessed a miracle right on video we got that bridge off without breaking those pieces without taking the bolts out that was a miracle on video and it it did pull up a little bit of the fiber but really that's just paper-thin it's not enough to care about so we lucked out again here right on film now that we got the bridge off I can tell just by feel under here that right across here it's it's just it's peak like this on the top it's like this on the inside of course it's the under that you know it's it's a V on the inside and that's the little bridge plate that's in there I got to tell you the bridge plate is pretty tiny again I would say the bridge plates only about this wide it doesn't even go to the front of the of the bridge here and I don't think it covers the back even I think it cuts through about here and with all those holes in a straight line including the extra two holes for the bolts you just got a weak spot right there it's really weak so we've got to find a way to flatten that out and strengthen that or we're just gonna repeat the problem so I'm gonna turn the camera off and do some pondering get my trusty little camera here and we're gonna go inside and see what we see on the bridge place there there you go you can see it's pretty chowder DUP in there I'm going over to the base side this is the base side there's where the little screw goes through these are the pin holes and let's see if we can see this side so you can see this is a fairly narrow strip it's not very big it's also you know based on what I can see there that's probably maple you know that's that's fairly good choice of wood it's at least it's a hardwood I think it doesn't look like it's spruce just based on this picture but it's hard to it's really hard to tell on the picture just trying to back off there to see if we can see any you know brace damage there or any loose braces and braces that I can see look like they're in pretty good shape here's the X bracing here in front and it's so close it's hard to tell what you're seeing there but as far as I can tell all the braces look pretty solid really just that bridge plate is definitely warped and it's definitely small just for the record I didn't try to look up the serial number on this and it's very difficult on Gibson's you know I already guessed it in the 50s my best guess based on the serial number is in 1953 it's an a1 4 - 6 - but I'm still just kind of guessing but but you know what I can find on their serial numbers leads me to believe it's a 1953 I would have guessed it in the 50s you I don't know I I just had this feel for figuring out about the decade they're built you know because I've done it so much and it's kind of like the smell the look the feel of it you know the way the wood is aged etc etc the binding binding age and just by looking at it I would say 1950s is what I would have guessed and then based on the serial number that kinda verifies it and it says 53 is what it says well I was born in 54 and I'm not in much better shape than this guitars in maybe I'm not even as good a shape I haven't had much luck here off lined I'm trying you know I don't study all the models like I told you and I'm trying to understand is this a perfectly flat top or was there some little bolt in it and so far I haven't been able to really find that information I think it was supposed to be flat just based on what I can see here it it looks like this is an unnatural bow to me I've done a number of things like this over the years with some success and some not so good you know I don't expect this to cause any problem but I don't know that it'll fix the problem either you know there's such a hump in this top and it's really significant I took this board here is very smooth on the on the side this touching the guitar I also beveled off all the corners and round it off the corners so that nothing will be you know making an imprint in the top so it's just the smooth board laying across there and it's perfectly flat on the inside I put a flat board a little thicker than this but similar to this in shape there's a V in that bridge plate and I'm trying to take this thing here and you know put it across that V and and flatten it out squeeze it with these clamps and flattens out in fact now that I've tightened these two clamps down to hold to depress the top down these are a little looser now again so I'm just you know I'm just trying to use force really to straighten the wood back out it's not likely to fix the problem but if we can get it flat to start with a little bit then maybe we can reinforce it and keep it flat I think I'm just gonna let it sit like this for a few hours at minimum and see if I notice any difference or improvement at all just trying out-of-the-box ideas because the thing is you know over you know it's it's been what 60 some years it's just you know it's just having swaying and it's just bowed and it doesn't want to come back in an hour or two I can tell you that for sure so you got to be a little careful how you do this - you can't just put a ton of force on something because it'll start breaking this old stuff so you got a you know sneak up on it you know and that's what I do with these clamps I just lightly tighten up a little bit more if I can feel a little bit of looseness in them the guitar has been setting this way for over the whole weekend maybe you got a little longer so it's been several days so we're gonna take all this rigmarole off of here now and see if it's helped it at all I'm not sure it's going to help it much but it couldn't hurt that's for sure I don't think it's dramatically different but I don't feel quite this steep V that was in there before it's more of a more of a rounded V if you will are you more than it is a V now I mean it was pretty much like a crease across there on the inside before you could feel it very distinctly now it's a very subtle you if you will very subtle actually but I can still tell it's got a little bow in it I don't think it would be any point in putting the bridge back on here right now like it is because there's this is still leaning forward a little bit still well not too bad it's it's pretty flat compared to the way it was and it definitely helped it but it's not you know it's not going to stay this way and if you just do the same thing over again it's just gonna pull it right back in there so we're gonna have to do something to try to help and stabilize this I think we're gonna have to figure out something maybe to add on to the plate expand the size of the plate a little bit to just stiff in this area otherwise it's just gonna pull right back up again Fred had just been a long time since I was able to get back to the Gibson guitar here as a matter of fact according to the time card April 1st I worked on it and then not today is May 13th so there you go it's been a while and the reason that took me so long to get back to it was because I was working on those twin mandolins I had a deadline on them to get them finished and so I really had to just devote my time to finishing those and you know I couldn't do anything else when you're working on those when you're building instruments you know it pretty much consumes your whole day all day long for every day it's for working on not to mention I have a lot of other farm projects too so I wasn't working 24 hours a day on those but by any stretch looking at this Gibson you know the thing I hate the most about it is this hump in here and it's a pretty big hump it was I I had pressed it I believe and I think that'll be in an earlier video where I press this flat for several days actually about a week with some boards and if it helped it any it's hard to tell I mean it helped it a little maybe but I really think the thing to do is to take the bridge plate out of this if I can get it out put it in a larger bridge plate clamp this thing flat as a pancake at least it'll have a chance because right now it has no chance of staying where it's at I mean you know people talk about fixing them with moisture and humidity and you know pressing them into place and and here's my take on it and it's just black and white simple if it pulled in the shape the way it is new from the factory what's the chances of pushing it back and it's not gonna pull back up again I mean it's gonna pull back up so to me if you don't fix it mechanically you're just wasting your time so that's what I'm gonna try to do I've got the little stew Mac plate puller in here and I got in here and I can see that there's actually a crack in the top right here that kind of opens up when you start pulling on this so what I'm gonna do is take my new bridge heater that I used on this and I'm gonna heat this area right in here and try to heat it hot enough to soften that plate to get it out of there you know it looks like it fits in between there pretty good without getting onto too much finish which is a good thing and we're going to plug it in and let it do its thing it'll get up to 300 and I think about 85 degrees something like that I can't remember what I had 380 is what I have it set on it shows it right there so we'll let it do its thing warm that up and we'll see if we can't pull it out of there well I walked in the other room to do something and just only was in there for a couple minutes and came back and this thing's already up to temperature so it only takes it a couple minutes to get up to temperature which is really nice I'm going to just kind of hold it there and really let it heat that up good and hot it's starting to scorch just a little bit I don't really want to you know burn it exactly but I don't but I do want it really high I'm gonna reach in here now and see if that soften did it all not so much I can tell yeah actually it is going through there it's uh this is actually broke all the way across here and I didn't realize that either till I started prying on this you can see it though that it is actually cracked it's really good that we're trying to take all this out of here and repair it it's really hard to do because you got something tight that's against something that's soft and it doesn't want to give I'm gonna push down right here to try that give me something to push against it's coming a little bit but boy not very much man it's gonna be a tough thing to do I'm gonna set this on there too to heat it up the noise you're hearing in the other room is Ron making antler saddles deer antler saddles not an easy process taking a bridge plate out of an instrument even if the even if the guitar top was really solid it's it's hard to get it out but one that's weakened like this one is its well maybe three times harder I don't think there's any chance of me getting that out of there I don't think there's any chance it's kind of loose right here but that's the only place that's loose [Music] put Chuck slight in here to see that light sit up a little better where I can see it a little better this thing needs a plate that fills the whole area in that area there I don't see much hope in it though I gotta be honest I don't see much hope in getting this out [Music] this is definitely one of those situations where you're gonna make it a lot worse before you make it a lot better I can't believe it I think I got it and that came out halfway clean too but you can I don't know if you can see very well how curved it is you can see how curved that thing is already and you know that's just that's only this wide and to have that much curve in something that narrow that just shows you that you're just not gonna flatten that out you know oh that's wonderful to get that out of there let's see how much damage I don't think we did much damage actually yeah it looks really clean I'm I'll take that I mean I don't know if you can see down in there or not but it's very clean I think you can see the holes there that I'm how clean it is it's very clean so I'm incredibly happy with that you can tell from this that it came off pretty clean actually you can see right here in this area I don't think it was glued in this area you know all this was glued obviously and all this was glued but right through here I don't think it was glued at all from here all the way through so that gives you some idea why it was a problem got a piece of cardboard here unfortunately has a fairly large hole in it but I think I can work around that I can put the hole in this this would be the neck of the guitar this way this is the back of the guitar that way what I'm trying to do then is just enlarge this bridge plate just using the cardboard as a pattern to see if what I cut out is going to be good or if I need to do something else actually I know this is short so I'm gonna make this a little longer here and then this there's a brace coming through here so I'm just gonna take and try that in other words I really want a much bigger bridge pad than what's in there there's just no way that a small bridge pad is gonna fix this problem and I know people are instantly saying won't that affect the sound yes it will affect the sound but most likely only a dog could hear the difference you'd be surprised it doesn't as long as you do high-quality wood and do it well it won't affect the sound very much if I use some piece of crud wood and just made it real thick and blocky and yeah it would change the sound but I'm gonna use a piece of Paducah which is quarter-sawed trans transfers sound very well I doubt seriously you'll notice any difference unless it's better I actually think it might actually make it better but I'm gonna start off with this being really big and more likely it will fit in there and then we'll have to cut it down but that's okay just go across there for now I know that's way too big but you got to start somewhere so base so basically it would fit under there's something like this once again I didn't have the camera all the way on I don't think but I'm cutting this down to make it go through the sound hold there it went through the sound hole now let's see if it fits into the spot wow it actually fits the spot I'm amazed that's pretty cool I think we could make it bigger in some areas though hold it up with that get inside there with my mirror and take a look at what we got well it looks pretty darn good everywhere except this upper corner here in this upper corner although we probably won't be able to get it through there if I do that I guess that's as good as we're gonna do because if I add to this corner I would like to add a half-inch to this corner down to nothing that would make it fit the brace better up in the bracelets up in there unfortunately I can't do that because I can't get it through the hole I don't think I can get it through the hole let me think about this no I can't get it through the hole if I do that now this is going to be the shape that looks like it because this actually fits really well with the exception of there's about this much space left down to nothing here and I would like to fill that that would be awesome but I don't think I can you look at one more times just to make sure I think that fits feels like it fits really well I'm better than I even really thought it would yeah that's that's good that's what we need right there it fits it really really well now you know that's so much bigger than this obviously here's what the here's what it used to look like like that and so we're adding a lot of structural support behind it and even some in front of it to keep it from doing this bow thing again and I don't think it's gonna hurt the sound I really don't I you know in the bottom line is the sound ain't gonna be any good anyway unless you can fix it and play it you know and you got to be able to play it and this top is busted up and twisted and it just is gonna be playable the way it is so we've got to fix it and here's how I'm gonna do it okay here is the situation this would be the way that you would typically put it on here because this is the front of the guitar here that's the back of the guitar this would be perfectly perpendicular then if you if you did it something like that here's my thinking now I have to admit this is kind of an experiment I'm thinking I'm gonna do it this way for two reasons not only will that save material but the more important reason is that that will put the grain at a 45 now you think well why would you want it at a 45 well you know if the grain is going perfectly through here this way it'll Bend the easier if it's going through at a 45 there's not much chance it's gonna Bend so I think that'll get make this plate the strongest possible plate that I can put in here and keeping it the same thickness etc so I really think that's the way to go it's not a perfect 45 but it's close enough and you know it's definitely not you know cuz it'll you know you have to picture it going in like this into the end of the guitar it's not going in like this so you know that's a it's similar to a 45 which would be cutting the angle across this it's still going across grain which is what you want but it's going to cross grain at a 45 which will keep this even stiffer that's what I'm gonna do I don't know it's an experiment but I believe it's the right way to go on this particular instrument all right we can go cut that out now and see how that fits in there well that's what she looks like I just test fitted it inside the guitar by hand and it works I have the light on in there and I have my mirror up in there but there just wasn't enough room to show you but it really fits perfectly in there and I think more importantly I really am happy with the 45 degree angle idea that just I think makes all kinds of sense in this particular case because I don't think you'll be able to to bend this in that 45 degree you could bend it this way no problem because it's got the lines going this way and you want the lines going across see these lines are going this way so you do want the lines going across there's no question but having them go across that a 45 is even better I think in this case now I've got to thin this down it's still pretty darn thick the old one was 130 right now this is at right at 170 so we're gonna take about 40 thousands off of this well that's what the final piece looks like it's I even beveled all of the edges that will be exposed that better that's what you will see is the beveled edge on the inside on the flat side here I didn't babble it I left it square and I took acetone and wipe this down with acetone really good and it's just wiped all kinds of resins out of there so I'm hopefully we're just about ready to glue this in place but before I get any hurry and do that a couple of things number one I want to check the inside make sure it's good and flat smooth clean and everything I might even take a damp rag and wipe around in there to get rid of any dust and stuff secondly I want to try to devise a really good flat clamping system that's gonna make this top as flat as possible so those are the two things I want to do first so this was a clean towel and I just dampened it down and I think you can probably see the dirt that came off on the inside there now that's not that much but it's worth doing to get rid of that dust and dirt that's in there so that your clean gluing it to a good clean surface and we'll do it again and just wipe it down one more time please clean that whole area and a little bit more came off but not too bad all right the double check and make sure it all fits up in there good and tight looks good I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a real flat board and I'm gonna sand the edges of the board so if anything this has a exaggerating obviously but I want the edges to go up very very very slightly on the board then I'm gonna put on here so that the most pressure is gonna be right here in the center to flatten this down that way well I believe I got lucky I found this piece of oak in my scrap wood pile I sanded smooth on this side I beveled the corners so that they won't make an imprint on the top of this guitar and you notice it rocks big-time on here like this well it's got a slight under Bowl and in the 18 inches that go across here it it's about a sixteenth of an inch off of this edge and about sixteenth of an inch off of this edge so that means then I'm you know in the middle here it's about a sixteenth of an inch it's gonna be pressed in a little bit about a sixteenth of an inch but you know keep in mind this is bowed really big on its own so this will pull it down and I think that'll be the perfect board to to glue this up with so it's going to be a little process here getting this all in here and getting it all clamped and etc I'm gonna need to make me a good call on the inside here to hold this to so I got to make that call first also well I'm gonna tell you I had to do some some work there to make a call to make this work it fits in there perfectly just like a glove now I'll show you what we got let's take out here's the this is the bridge pad if I can get it back out which may not work there it go okay the fridge pad goes in there about like that and here's the call I had to make and see I had to bevel these edges off in order for it to go through this round hole it wouldn't go through as thick as it is but I it's just a piece of plywood that I've sanded flat hand it should hold that up in there really good and tight now and just for the record I've got a piece of this parchment paper laid across here so that the glue that squeezes out through these holes won't stick to anything and by the way in tearing this parchment paper you can notice how I did such a wonderfully clean job tearing it off not that it I'm pretty sure you need to be a lady to do that because I see women tear that stuff off of those those cardboard tear things all the time and they just rip it right off no problem I don't think I've ever done that once in my life so they have a skill set that I don't possess I am going to flood this with some blue since I'm only putting blue on the one side I'm gonna be a little liberal with it and put quite a bit of glue on here I don't want a ton of squeeze out but on the other hand I want to make sure that glue makes it to the surfaces everywhere else and I did glue it to the right side proper side or whatever you want to call it because the bevel is on the other side so I know that's how it goes there's another good reason to have that little bevel on there okay I believe we're good I've already got the call inside I've set these big heavy clamps to the right size approximately the problem with my normal bridge clamps is they don't open up wide enough for as much stuff as we're gluing up here okay so the first thing I'm going to do is get this in there and get it in approximate location got it in the place I'm hoping it's gonna just kind of sit there for just a second while I get the call and not it won't you think you could get it to just kind of stick there for just a second but it won't I don't need to think I can get turned loose of it long enough to grab the call so I'm gonna have to turn it over put the call in I have to turn it over like this get a hold of that call up in there somewhere wherever it is now okay turn it back now I believe I've got it all up in there good and tight I just hope who doesn't squeeze out and squeeze much and get on my call I hope not I don't know be my luck that's what it happened hoping I could get this in here before the call falls out these long ones I'm going to put them on the ends and I put it in the wrong place there but that's okay I can move it trying to find where the end is there it feels like it might be it about right there try to get my light back in there and see what see what I can see okay this one needs to come back this way that one's probably okay and now we'll put one in the middle [Music] now we're gonna crank them down pretty good okay and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put these clamps on these edges to push this middle down okay now I have these clamps pulling this bowed board down on the edges that'll force this middle down a little bit more I'm actually gonna loosen these clamps and retighten them just because I think that might make it get a little bit flatter don't know if it'll help at all or not this kind of loosening um but not really getting them real loose just loosen a little bit to hopefully let that glue move a little bit now type them back up I don't know how you can get in any flatter than that that's just I mean if there's a way to do it and get it flatter huh I wouldn't know what it would be I'm hoping that's gonna do the job that really seemed like a good that's method now I'm gonna see if I can see it's my clamps are in the right places still they look pretty good to me that's about as good as I can I can do so now if I can get my stuff out like the light here I'm not sure I didn't even get my light out now maybe not just Beverly get it out well Chuck I like your light man that's cool we're gonna let that set up for at least 24 hours might even let it set for a couple days this guitar has been clamped in the clamps for this new bridge plate for over 30 hours then I took the clamps off and let it set overnight yet again so it's been well over 48 hours now and you know I let it sit kind of with the clamps and boards off of it so that it would have time to dry really good because with all that boards and all the paper and everything on it it you know I was afraid it wouldn't dry real well but it has dried really well this thing is just as flat as a pancake now that it is just perfect I really I honestly never thought it would turn out this flat so you can't beat that it's just really turned out perfect I've got the bridge we're gonna put the bridge back on it but I did notice when I was tapping on it you can hear that there is a rattle in this so there is a loose brace somewhere that will have to get in there and figure that out not too worried about that we can do that whether this is glued on there or not so I'm just going to go ahead and get this glued on I this dot was in there but it was cockeyed so I just pushed on this pin and it pushed the dot right out this one here is that the dot is in flush so I don't want to mess with this one so I think I'm just gonna cut the metal off on this one this screw here I'm not I'm not a fan of those screws as you know so there's and there's they really provide no benefit whatsoever in my opinion so I'm just gonna cut this off and then take it to a little grinder there and grind it down flush took it to the belt sander and sanded it off fairly flush I'm going to just try to clean up the rest here were they I didn't want to take anything up the thickness of this that's why I quit with the belt Center I just got all the high spots knocked down level I can't remember if I pointed this out before or not but these halls have been repaired whoever did it did a pretty decent job I when I level them off flat there maybe you can see there's like little Halfmoon spaces around where they were filled they did it with the proper wood and everything so that's a good thing you can see it a little bit here on the top there is some still chip out here on this top - I wish it wasn't there but not much I can do about that I mean I can fill it obviously we may fill it with some real wood here depending on how everything turns out and how with how much we want to go into it [Music] [Applause] let's see how that kind of fits up on there it lays nice and flat now which is good all right this areas inside of here is very dull and real close to this it's really dull but before I glue this back it's a lot easier getting in there now so maybe I'll try to buff that out just a little bit this is really dull all around here so it'd be kind of nice that that was buffed out a little bit you see instantly how much dirt that took off of there just really these things do get kind of filthy over the years and this polishing compound just does a nice job on that trying to keep it off of the bare wood there because we're gonna glue the pickguard back down and I don't really want to mess up bare wood too much definitely is cleaning it up take the dry part of the rag now and see how that buffed it out there oh yeah that looks so much nicer yeah that looks so much nicer and we'll try to do that all the way around all these dull areas that are going to be real close to the bridge probably when I took the bridge off there might have got a little burning there on that finish we may have to touch the finish up a little bit there I've been trying to figure out what I'm gonna do about all these spots here that where the finish is melted and pulled up from that other pickguard being on there because he doesn't want the other pick guard back on there so I'm not sure what we can do with that yeah I've been really thinking about it trying to come up with some ideas and I don't really have a good idea to be honest just got some things I'm gonna try [Music] it looks a lot better around there still quite quite dull around here it's not perfect on this but it's getting a lot better and you know it'll it'll blend in a lot better when we go to buffing out the whole thing later maybe you can see the difference between this one and this one how much how much nicer it looks this one's pretty dull over here and this one over here is pretty shiny [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think that's good enough going to just brush it just if there's any residue on the wood hopefully clean the wood off there that looks pretty good can't hardly get much better than that and lastly before I glue this back on there I want to try to clean it up a little bit it's especially you know it's just got some issues glue spread around on top of it here and got a lot of discoloration and stuff so maybe we could clean it up a little bit I could probably do it after it's on the guitar just as well but that's not in case I run into anything it might be nice to have it off the guitar well that scraped off pretty easy that glue did here's a little piece of 320 wet or dry and I'm just gonna go over the whole thing kind of lightly to see if this pearl will clean up and see what the problems are cuz there's just all kinds of gunk on here this pearl is down in the hole deeper it's deeper than the rest of it here so let's see if we can't scrape the would kind of level with the pearl there just to make it look better it looks weird having it down in the hole in other words this pearl probably came out somebody put it back in there but they didn't do it that well the problem with this is it's all broken out at different places hopefully it'll focus on that you can see it it's chipped out in different places kind of ugly looking so I'm tempted to take my dremel and just rout it out in order to do that I'd have to be able to get this out of here or at least that would make it a lot easier I don't know if this is gonna come out this is this actually feels like it's almost like a ceramic or a glass almost versus normal plastic it may not be but it actually it's probably some kind of plastic because I can see grooves in there where the strings were but it just looks weird it looks different than most plastics it is a plastic but I bet it's a very hard brittle plastic I wonder if I can somehow get hold of that and pull it out of there probably not I think it's glued in which is never good you never want to glue these in and it I believe it's been glued in I'd like to fix that because I think we're going to end up with a really nice guitar here and I hate to mess have something like this making it look really bad something I hadn't really noticed but upon close inspection I've noticed is that these string grooves are starting to go into the Pearl here up in this part and I don't like that at all here too it's kind of messed up the Pearl so that makes me want to redo it even a little bit more now I don't know sometimes I should just leave well enough alone but I really want to fix that and the other problem with this is it's not these holes I don't believe are straight across the other they're in a arch that doesn't make it any easier if I could get that out that would sure solve a lot of problems oh it came out that time hold on it pulled on it wouldn't come out before it had been glued in there I believe it's I can see old glue in there but apparently that just shocked it enough there then it came out that time alright that makes it a lot easier now at least I can get a flat deal going on here and try to route this out well here's my setup you know the router won't run along this edge here and I have a spacer in here to hold it back about the right amount I have this double stick tape on this to just keep it from sliding a little bit it's not sticking real hard or anything but it'll just kind of keep it in place I've got this kind of stationary under the table with these clamps this thing is just floating back here but that's just a support to keep it up at the right height more or less so I'm gonna give it a shot here I'm just gonna go by I across there and see how I want to do this it's I haven't really tried this like this before [Music] okay that turned up pretty good that got me flat across the bottom there and I kind of just my I followed this radius around here I didn't get all the way up to the pearl which I would like to do I'm going to do the rest of that by hand with a chisel I don't know though so much faster with dremel tool I may try to get a little closer problem is that I'm hitting this thing now so I'm gonna be doing it freehand so I might as well just try it right here on the table it won't move as much I don't think on the table I just put the little double stick tape on here again again it doesn't stick all that great it just keeps it from just sliding slippery smooth so I just stick it down right here and I'm gonna do this by hand just by I get up close to the pearl but not quite touch the pearl [Music] that's pretty good I did actually get up to the pearl that time with that and I didn't really cut the pearl I almost feel like cutting the Pearl to be honest so that I could get it straight again I hate those chips in there now I just need to clean up the ends [Music] yeah I've got a pretty smooth line they're not quite as smooth on the backside because it's an arch but you know I'm just trying to get rid of all the scarring there was a lot of scarring and this there's still some I tell you I think I'm just gonna go ahead and route this backside out to the pearl also and I'll just feel from one part of the pearl to the other that looks real good now I like that a lot better it's from the Pearl to the pro so I'm filling everything in the inside the pearl there now I didn't come all the way up to the ends of these because of these pearl dots so there's some restrictions there and speaking of pearl dots I think I'll put this one back in if I can clean it up here get all that old glue off of there they had some kind of yellow glue on there kind of look like hide glue actually that just really made it look bad I'm gonna see if we can get get this dot glued back in here before I start messing with the rest of it yeah that looks much better and now I'll make me a pattern I'll trace this and make me a pattern and we'll cut it out of rosewood and set it in there I just took a little piece of post-it note here doesn't really matter something thin is actually better I didn't have much hit her in the shop today Hertz to draw it in there a little bit if you can so we just need to make that little piece there out of rosewood cut out a little piece of rosewood here that has a very similar look and feel if we do a good job you won't hardly be able to tell it I hope that's what we end up with I'm going to just rough cut out this stuff here I'm not going to try to follow the exact lines or anything and then I think I'm just going to glue stick it to this now I should be I'll just take cut that out on the bandsaw and it you know if we just really do a good job it ought to be real close to fit okay my approach to this is I cut this angle here I mean I cut this radius here and I'm trying to make sure that that fits up the best first there's a few little problems but very little it just it almost is perfect it's real close so I'm just cutting out the little problem areas that little tiny areas that are problems man I mean I tell you what it's less than a human hair in the worst place and that's right there it's very very very close and this looks pretty dang perfect okay the other thing I'm doing is on these flat edges I've under beveled them all of them so that as they go in they get tighter and tighter it's pretty close to fitting just got a little bit of work to do here [Music] I'd say all I really have to do at this point is knock off some of this top edge and mostly on this side just back bevel that some more and it's gonna go right down in there I believe it's just a little bit wide right through here so we're gonna go try just touching that on the belt sander just bubbling that a little bit well in my effort to clean this up a little bit right here I ended up just touching that and that popped right out tell you what it don't take much this whole blue sometimes so I'm cleaning up the back of that and I'm gonna put it right back in place [Music] pretty sure there would be no problem there I believe this is just about ready to press in maybe just a hair yet just a hair too tight I think a little hard to decide how to handle that depressing in pretty well I don't know how deep it's going that's my problem like to see it go in all the way see how deep the hole is I think it should be in the neighborhood of 60 thousandths 61 thousandths this is probably quite a bit thicker this is a hundred and thirty three thousandths so it's more than twice as what what it needs think I'll take this to my thickness sander first knock it down and get it at least under a hundred thousand get it down to about eighty thousand and then we'll see how well it fits in here I think it'll be easier to tell I believe I've got it fit and very near perfect in there now it's real close to perfect it's think there's a little bit of something on this one corner down on this corner but I quite figured out where the problem is yet I'd say it's on the actual corner based on what it's feeling like so I'm gonna try to just sand off the corner believe that's it I don't feel anything moving now feels like it's down flush now there's only 28,000 sticking out the hole is 60,000 is deep so and this is 90,000 thick so that's 30000 sticking out hits I think it's flush it's right down in there perfect I don't think it could be any better it's just it's not as perfect as it can be I've looked on the other side as far as I can tell it's all the way inside there there doesn't look to be a gap on the inside either looks like the woods all the way down to the holes so if everything's perfect it's perfect let's just get her glued in because it's rosewood I'm just gonna scratch it just a little bit it's kind of smooth just scratch it just a little bit to make it a little bit more clingy [Music] for sit-down in there that's what it looks like before I put the clamps on it you can see up close there I believe that it's pretty tight won't really hardly be able to tell it other than the two little lines on the edges otherwise I think it's pretty much gonna be blend right in even the color of the wood is very close all right so now we just want to put some clamps on that and hold it in place in fact I think I'm just gonna put it in my vise right here this advice is handy for things like this cuz it keeps everything good and flat squeeze her down pretty good with that now don't want to go crazy I don't want to break something that's pretty tight we'll just go ahead and let that set up before we mess with it [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rosa String Works

Views: 336,786

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, JS200, SJ200, Jumbo guitar, guitar top, top repair, bridge removal, bridge repair, bridge replacement, bridge plate

Id: _sy1nlx90z4

Length: 66min 9sec (3969 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2019