456 RSW 1945 Martin

[Music] hey everybody caleb here at the rose of string works workshop today we've got this 1945 martin double o 17 and it needs a lot of work i'm gonna go ahead and set it down and bring you in close to show you what we got going on here so you can probably already see this guitar is missing the bridge entirely it's also kind of sunk in at the pick guard because the pick guard is probably shrunk you might be able to see here we got a crack on the top the center seam is starting to come up here there's a crack here pretty bad i'm not sure you can totally see it though there you can see the line so that's pretty bad but also you can hear the braces moving on the inside so there's some braces loose on the top then we go to the back there's a crack here here the center seam is also kind of showing up there's some cracks around the seam of the back joining the sides somebody screwed this neck on i don't think this is original martin probably did not do this our braces loose on the back this thing is probably going to have to come apart to be fixed right if we look at the headstock here's something we see all the time these tuners these top ones are really bent that's from falling over and hitting these these get bent real bad these are really bent i also think this guitar has been refinished because it doesn't show up very well on camera but this the color that's in here and it would be over the martin logo is very different from what's over the body so it looks like the body's been stripped and refinished at some point really the first thing we need to do here is take this thing apart i think the way to do that is we're gonna take the back off i'm gonna start by taking these out i kind of wonder why somebody did this what what problem they were having and it caused them to screw this neck on it looks like this was glued on at some point but didn't stick very well to the metal i've been working on this martin guitar trying to get the back off and this wood is a good 75 years to get nice and brittle it's tried to break it every chance it's had it has not been going easy by any means and on this one it really is slow and steady when in this race i get too carried away i end up cracking something i don't want to crack i've been using the exacto knife a little bit to moderate success i'll try heating my knife up all the way to just the neck block that's all that's left having a lot of difficulty getting this well it just popped i got it off got a little bit of damage up here but considering how old this thing is and how brittle it is it's it's a little bit of a surprise we got away with as little damage as we got you can probably see how loose these are can you see there it says cf martin co nazareth pennsylvania they don't have a label on the inside just the stamp so we got this thing open here's two braces from the top we just fell off you see here this one's broken all the way up to where it joins none of these other braces look to be in all that bad a condition there's just tons of cracks on this guitar oh you can see the tail block is totally split totally split all the way across i don't even know what's holding that in that's gonna be fun so i started to take a look at the back of this old martin and i've actually gone ahead and cut out a whole bunch of mahogany cleats i assume i'll use them throughout this whole guitar but i've cut out a few small ones i think i'm going to use to cleat these cracks there's one here it's real obvious and there's also one here kind of harder to see i think i'm gonna get some cleats made to go on these cracks so that when i start gluing these braces back down and glue these cracks up as well well i'm just about ready to start gluing stuff onto this back you can see i've already got a couple of clamps down and that's just to try to push this back down flat because it's got kind of a curve to it i'm actually going to have to clamp in a couple spots where i'm not putting any glue because like on this brace where it's lifted here it's not lifted on this side but i am going to have to clamp this side down so the back sits flat what i've already cleaned out underneath and on the underside of this brace and this brace cleaned out where these two go i've got all my cleats made but i am going to glue the braces down first so i know that the back is sitting flat before i put the cleats in so i'm going to get to it before you do that before you even clean it at all you can use this clamp and you have to put leather on both sides of this open these up you know and then this tightens it up put glue in there as good as you can get it in there tight bond and you know put again leather on both sides and then tighten these down and then tighten this up and it'll pull that crack together and that way that crack will be airtight okay because otherwise it won't be airtight you know whenever if we try to refinish it later right that'll pull it really tight together and it'll squeeze the glue out and uh anyway do that first as a separate step don't try to do the cleats and everything at once you can do this while you're doing that that'll be okay but uh you might want to put a slide a piece of wax paper under there too possibly just as a precaution make sense where's my phone i probably took your phone there i have mine i got my phone in my pocket all right just making sure all right we're good okay i can do this okay wax paper yeah yeah paint this tight bond down in that craft good it'll just be better a better repair well i think you just heard but you may not have seen what jerry came over to uh give me this clamp here and we're gonna pull this crack in before we move on to much else i think i'm going to do this first before i do really anything else i'm going to slightly disassemble what i already have so i gone ahead and got this clamp kind of set up here so jerry said to do was try to get tight bond in this crack the second i turned the camera on i can't get any glue out of the bottle the only thing i worry about is this not being flat it doesn't look it but i can't get it to move so i guess it is i think it's looking pretty good there's definitely some glue in there what i'm going to do next is clamp down the braces get them gluing up but i'm not going to do anything with cleats yet i'm going to wait for this to totally dry before i do anything with the cleats [Music] those two are clamped up i think i'm going to leave them like that and then when i come back to do the cleats i'll do these two as well i'm just gonna let this dry as it is spend a little bit of time cleaning up the squeeze out well while the back of this martin is drying i've started looking at the top and the sides and you can see all the way across here this whole block is cracked all the way through i've actually got it just dry clamped right now just making sure it's going to line up when i do clamp it the further i get on this side of this crack the less it lines up but the more it moves like it's less impacted by this clamped well i think this is how we're going to do it getting the whole thing clamped makes it line up pretty well so what i'm going to do now is take all these clamps off take my tight bond my paintbrush and get it all the way through here and plant this up leaving is the only way i know that is a memory of you cause how do you take a memory and put it away for good [Music] i should [Music] [Music] do well i just pulled this back out of the clamp and i set the cleats on just trying to get them lined up where i'm going to want them i think what i'm going to do is once i get glue on these i'm going to put these locks on here and then clamp these down use the clamps that way i don't have to put the whole thing in the big clamp and use up all that space just to get this done but i'm pretty sure i can just get it done from here so i'm kind of picking out my clamps deciding what i'm going to use where once i get that done i'm going to glue this thing up [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] well i still cry sometimes even though i'm happier now [Music] cause how do you take a memory and put so now i can't forget them all the lord knows [Music] now that i've got the back glued up with those cleats i'm going to start working on gluing these braces that are broken or loose there's a couple of them that are pretty loose but not so loose that they're coming out so i'm just going to use the bottle to get the glue in and then push my paint brush in what i'm going to do is i'm going to get the glue in where i want it here and then actually the clamp is over that way kind of behind me so i'm going to glue it up get the glue in where i want it and then take it over and clamp it because it's hard to get around the whole body when it's in the clamp so here we go [Music] i just pulled the clamps off the cleats on this martin guitar here uh there's still a little bit of a mess to clean up but that's okay i can get to that but because i got the clamps off that means i can now go use them start cleaning the inside of the guitar so i'm gonna get that clamped up before i take the time to clean this up while i'm cleaning up the uh some of the glue on these cleats i think it's probably worth mentioning that the green on these cleats is running in this direction where the rest of the green on the back is running in this direction and that should help strengthen these up they're not going to break across the grain so it won't follow this crack again and that that is true for all the cleats that we do it's just i don't mention it very often but this is the way the green's running and even on the front and sides if we put a cleat in it will be running perpendicular to the grain that we put it on also generally true these are mahogany cleats on a mahogany back and seeing as this whole guitar is mahogany they're all mahogany cleats it's just a little bit nicer to have the same wood as the cleat for the wood that you're cleating so i'm looking at the top of this martin guitar and you can see that there's this crack right here actually it was sitting fairly close there for a second but uh i've already cut out some cleats for this crack but i'm kind of thinking i need to fill it with some glue and get it clamped i'm not exactly sure how i want to clamp it though because it's not really open in this direction it's kind of open this way so my real worry is squeezing glue out on the top and making a mess when i can't clean it up that well you know if it were face down in the in the clamp system with the bars i could probably clamp it in there but i worry about it squeezing out on the top and making a mess that's going to totally dry before i can clean it up i may not have much of a choice though i might just have to get some glue in there kind of push it together by hand clean up what i can and then put it in the clamp i have to ask jerry what he thinks but i think that's probably going to be what we end up doing so i decided to just put it in and clamp it up so i've got these pressing it flat so that it will be you know it'll end up flat i've got some wax paper underneath the guitar so it doesn't stick to the bottom i put the glue in from the inside rather from then from the outside so most of the mess was on the inside and i did turn it over and i saw that i had some glue squeezing out on the outside of the instrument kind of cleaned it up best i could put it in here got it clamped up i'm gonna let this dry for a little while and then i'm gonna put in the cleats on these cracks well these are set up for long enough i'm going to take these blocks off and glue these cleats in all right so there's six cleats across the bottom crack i'm gonna let those dry for a while make sure they're good and set well the cleats on the inside of this old martin have been drying for quite a while so i think they're good we can move on from them something i noticed we've got a crack in the top which you can't see from the inside there you can see it and it just runs along the edge and it kind of starts over the top here i think i'm going to go ahead and glue this up it's going to take a little odd of clamping because not only do i need to push it down this side needs to come in pushed in to really get that crack closed so i'm gonna have to clamp it down this way and see if i can't find something to pull it in this way to get that closed i think that's what i'm gonna do next just getting everything re-glued and closed up well i've got it clamped up i've got a couple of these clamps to pull down and then this bigger one i had to get one that was obviously much too large because i was having trouble finding one that was even large enough but these are the lighter weight ones these are aluminum so it's not too big we've got this press tip pretty well so i'm gonna set this aside to dry move on to something else so on the back of this whole martin here there used to be this plate with screws in it it was also attached to the neck and i don't think we're planning on putting that back on so i went ahead and made some little mahogany plugs to fill those holes so it will match the rest and the grains are in the same way as the rest of the back so i i just used a little punch to punch out a thin piece of mahogany they fit real well into these holes i don't knock them out so i'm going to glue them in and some point down the line we can dye them to match the rest of the back well back to work on this old martin i started looking at making a bridge for it because it's missing its original one so i've got this piece of rosewood that is just about the right length and it's actually a little wider this way which should help cover up some of the uh some of the scar the old one and also make sure that we've got enough room to put the saddle where we need it but it's still obviously way too tall so i'm going to start working on taking it down next well i'm going in the right direction it's still probably a little thick on the ends but i'm making progress you can see here i've started kind of scooping out the ends of this this will end up larger than the old one i think but that will really help cover up some of the mess it was on there so what i'm doing here is i'm taking this over to the thickness sander and just thicknessing up to a certain point because it rolls and it'll do this bevel up i've got a line here where i'm stopping so it should just give me a nice clean bevel and it's it's working pretty well but i'm gonna have to thin these out just a little bit more before it's done so that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna keep working on this bridge get it good and shaped just like it should be well i've got this bridge just about to the shape i want it in i've gone ahead and rounded off the corners so it's not sharp to put your hand against it is kind of the wrong color but that's an easy fix i did end up thinning down these edges to about a hundred thousandths at the suggestion of jerry i did take a little bit more off the top as well i think i'm going to have jerry take a look at it before i go gluing anything on but we're getting awfully close to where this bridge needs to be well jerry came over and took a look at this and before i go any further i'm going to replace the bridge plate we could go into a long conversation about originality versus functionality now this is the original one but a duke bridge plate will make this a lot stronger but really the biggest thing here is jerry told me to replace it so i'm replacing it yell at him not me so i've just about got it out it is underneath these braces so i think i'm gonna just have to get my exacto and kind of cut it to get it all the way out a little easier so i started just kind of scoring this and i want to be clear this is a piece of junk wood you know this is like a really cheap piece you can find out of a two by four that is why jerry wants to replace it so the grounds for replacing it are very valid don't think that they're not it's very soft i would think it'd be not a good thing bridge plate well i've got this new padouk bridge plate made and it's fitting very well pressed up in here it's definitely gonna be a lot better than this cheap piece of wood that was in there and it's definitely making me think it's it's a soft wood it just cut too easy and broke too easy so anyway we're gonna have a much higher quality piece of paduk in there now so looking at what i can do to get that glued in there got a couple clamps i might just go through the sound hole and use the call it's a little more evenly distribute the pressure i think that's not looking to be a bad idea i've got the bridge pad here and i've gone ahead and cleaned off the back with acetone take off any of the oil on the padauk i'm pretty much ready to start putting glue on this you can see there's parchment paper on the other side of the holes for the bridge pins just so that any glue that gets in there won't stick to anything won't have any problems [Music] well you can see i've got this new bridge pad all clamped in i fit four different clamps in there through the sound hole and i got them kind of spaced out on the on there so i got some even pressure i do actually have another board on the underside so on the outside of the guitar to help kind of keep it flat i'm going to set this aside and give it some time to dry so when i started this martin we were just going to repair it get it up in a playing order and then be done but at the advice of jerry the customer has decided he wants it refinished this that's on it well where there is finish on it is definitely not the original finish it's been stripped back here and here there's no finish where the bridges come off and all around it there's no finish everywhere else it looks like it's just been kind of stained so we are going to put some real finish on this i am right now trying to very carefully remove this pick guard it should make refinishing this a whole lot easier we might even be able to get within some of this kind of bowl this pickguard has pulled i'm just very carefully sliding this underneath just a little bit more at a time i'm not trying to get too greedy don't want to break it oh big jump not much left nope i don't like pops and there's something broken that way there we go i think the thing to do here is i'm going to kind of keep this warm with something heavy on it flat just to make sure this stays flat so we don't want it doing anything silly i'm kind of surprised how clean that came off that's really going to help us out when it comes time to strip off what's on here i think i'm going to go ahead and take the tuners off next just to take them off i am pretty sure we're going to glue the back on before we refinish this but taking tuners off is pretty easy and i'll probably try to knock the nut out as well just trying to get rid of anything that might be in excess especially the easy stuff well i'm getting ready to glue the back on this it's going to be best to do it before we decide to do anything else and the way i'm going to do this is i'm going to start by just gluing up to the waist getting that clamped up maybe give it a little bit to dry and then we're gonna make sure the neck angle is right before we glue the top portion of the back this way i can get this all lined up don't have to worry about anything but just lining it up and getting it clamped in after we get the back on we can start working on the [Music] [Music] the finish knows i should [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] i can't [Music] it makes me wish you were near i trust makes me wish [Music] all over again [Music] guitars are so much faster well i may actually be wanting to start on mine soon build your own acoustic yeah build it from a kid or you can build it from scratch well provided i can get some help i'd like to build it from scratch well on the last clip you saw me clamping up the top portion of this bag and i did that after i had the neck clamped in like this this bar runs and then i've got it wedged to push the neck back at the right angle so after i done that i glued up the last part of the neck and it sat overnight now i'm going through and cleaning up any little bit of squeeze out we have and get this finished up and we can start working on the finish of this guitar well i've started stripping this and i started on the back which is probably the best place to start so if you have to cover anything up it's on the back i did most of this with the scraper just giving it a good scrape and a lot of that is all in pressure i don't want to press too hard or i'm going to take chunks out and i really don't want to do that so it was just kind of a light scrape and it it turned out really good there's no waviness to it you can see it where i've done and where i haven't and all the unevenness here and much more uniform where i've scraped i did a little bit of sanding in here and it does help even it out a little bit but i am going to start working on the other side now and most of it's gonna be with a scraper over again [Music] [Music] well i've been working on this for quite a while it's taken quite a bit of time and i've got the whole back scraped this and the side scraped i haven't started on the top yet but i'm actually pretty happy with this it's not quite perfect yet there's still a few spots especially up and around the neck because it's kind of hard to get to with the neck the cracks were they're a little harder to get because they're actually kind of divoted in so it's going gonna need a little bit more work but this is coming along pretty well it's looking pretty good and it's taken quite a bit of time like about two two hours to get this done with a scraper but i can't imagine how long it would take trying to sand this whole thing it'd take you know at least twice as long trying to sand it and get to this point still got a ways to go though i mean doing the top is going to be a little bit of work especially avoiding the fretboard i have to talk to jerry about what we want to do on the neck and the back of the headstock i don't think we're going to do much on the front of the headstock because we're going to knock off the martin logo if we do too much so i'm going to keep at it start working on getting this top all scraped off well i think we've got this sanded well enough you can start putting some color on there which is why i've got my gloves on i've got the light brown leather dye this is what i'm going to use put some color on this i'm going to make sure it's well mixed and shook up before i do anything [Music] light brown this side's a little bit lighter than this side so i could put just a little bit more maybe just rub it in a little bit more okay yeah it looks pretty good not too bad no definitely this was book matched because it's kind of a line here yeah and it probably does light on the ends just light on the ends on these little weird spots you might take a tiny paintbrush and try to actually paint those exact lines in that round spots with the with the darker maybe or maybe with this at first maybe try it with this first okay just to try and just try to leave it there don't wipe that off it might make it blend a little bit better and if that doesn't work then maybe try the next darker shade you know the darker brown okay and see what you think i mean you know just leaving leaving extra dye in those spots sometimes will make them dark enough yep well that was the back i'm going to go ahead and keep going with the sides and maybe some of the neck well i've gone ahead and got the whole thing stained now that it's all stained i'm going to start kind of prepping this for spraying the clear coat i'm going to start that by actually filling this hole so we can put the usual hanger on it i think we're gonna have a lot better luck if we just fill it for the long run it opens up for more options just the best idea once i get that done i can start filling the hole with some newspaper just trying to get this ready to spray well it's probably been a big jump in video but it's also been a really big jump in time uh this old martin has had quite a few thin coats of lacquer put on it i've already sanded it flat once and we're going back to do it again this time we're a lot closer to having all these green these grains filled with the lacquer what i've got is some 400 sandpaper and some soapy warm water sitting over on the side and i'm just trying to basically sand off all that i can without getting to the wood because we want the grains to be filled but basically that's all the lacquer we want on it it's just enough to fill the grains and then a thin coat to cover the whole thing and gloss it up so i've got a lot of sanding ahead of me i might give you a look when i get done sanding this time so i'm back to working on this martin there are a couple spots on the back that even after spraying this a bunch of times and then spraying it again i'm not quite getting them full most of them are around where there was maybe some damage or like up here where we filled those two holes so what i'm doing now is i'm just using a toothpick to get a little lacquer i'm filling those holes with the lacquer so when it dries we can sand the whole thing and it'll be level and all those little deeper spots will be filled so i'm going through and checking to make sure i get all the spots well it's been a little big jump between clips on this martin big enough that i can't remember the last clip i made for this martin it's probably been over a month i've been spraying it and sanding it and waiting or spraying it and waiting and sanding and then spraying it again and waiting spraying it four or five times and then wait a week and then it's shrunk down to basically nothing um basically we're to the point with this thing that we're going to try to call it good where it is it's really showing that it's an old guitar we're trying to refinish the bigger problem areas are all where it's been damaged you know the grains are filled for the most part if this were a new instrument we would be done with it it would look great the problem areas are all you know the cracks where the blackers just seeped in and shrunk seeped in a trunk but you know i don't think you know in the next three to four months working on this could we get those all the way full with lacquer it's just not going to happen so [Music] i've got this to the point in which it's going to look like a nice taking care of 70 year old instrument rather than a brand new 70 year old instrument and i think that's okay it's going to be leaps and bounds better than when it came in so i've been wet sanding this with 600 and if you really want to get an idea what it's kind of going to look like well once it's all buffed out while it's wet gives kind of an idea and i've got to say it's looking pretty good hoping that we can get the bridge placed today or have a rough idea where it's going to go i don't remember if i've shown it but i've made the bridge and it's a very nice piece of rosewood i also don't remember if i've shown it but i've cleaned the pick guard up a little bit um we could probably be buffed out and it'd look really good but if you want a quick idea what this is kind of going to look there you go i'm really happy with the way the headstock is turning out i'm not sure how good it looks in the picture with the way i've been sanding but it looks really clean and considering when this came in you could barely see the martin and now it's you know very cleanly obvious what it is i'm really happy with the way this is turning out the name on the headstock it's just looking really good now it's been so long with this that i don't actually remember what i have underneath the tape i think i was going to refret this i don't remember and we're kind of the point which i'm gonna have to pull it up to find out and when i pull it up i'm gonna probably want to score the edges so that i don't go ripping up any finish so i think i'm at the point in which i want to pull this tape off see what i'm working with if i'm going to refret it i should probably just do it now get a new nut on there and then we can get the bridge placed because to get the bridge placed i have to have a nut and you know if i'm going to refret it it needs a new nut so it's kind of a order of operations so i guess it's time to pull this tape off all right so i'm going to be really careful with this and i'm probably going to have to do most of the neck because i finished the neck so i'm going to go ahead and do this off camera i mean you can see what i'm doing i'm taking my exacto and just really carefully running work you know the tape meets the finish so i'm going to do this off camera and then bring it back once i'm ready to

Channel: Rosa String Works

Views: 26,461

Rating: 4.9476838 out of 5

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, 1945 martin, OO

Id: G7wr61q2Q5k

Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021