Let's tear into a 1930's Martin, shall we?

well hey there gang welcome back i'm going to do something a little ambitious here this week this is a martin guitar from 1934. now now don't get too excited down boy it's not a triple o 45 it's actually an arch top this is an r18 arch tops from martin yeah they made them they're not that highly prized today uh the story is that they really weren't that great and they didn't sell that well but is that true let's look at the figures in 1935 the year after this one was built martin made about 3500 guitars total of those more than a thousand that's almost a third of their production were arch tops like this in 1934 when they made this one uh it was in a run of about 500 of this particular model that's 10 times more than the number of d28s that they built that year so these were really kind of the backbone of their line that's one thing i don't think a lot of people understand is just how low those production numbers were for martin in the mid-1930s the so-called golden era and a really seasoned experienced workforce at that point some of those guys had been there for decades but they were really only called upon to build 10 guitars a day so there was enough time baked into the process to really get things right sweat all the details and all that i mean they were being efficient obviously but you know they weren't under the gun every second of the day trying to catch up with the demand they were probably working more at their own pace and the results really showed in the output so martin always a conservative company waited for the whole jazz thing to stick around for at least 15 years just to make sure it wasn't going to be a fad before they dipped their toes into the arch top market and even then they didn't go all the way gibson was the vanguard obviously they've been making them for 30 years at that point and the l5 which is the first f-hole guitar had been in production for a decade so 1931 martin says yeah yeah okay okay we can make an arch top it's got a round sound hole and it looks basically exactly like one of their standard flat top guitars except it's got a floating bridge and a tailpiece and well he stuck on the extended jazzy looking pickguard on there just so the cool kids would like it but you know it's got other things that are really strange like it's got a flat back on it it's not arched any more than you know a standard flat tops would be and the sound board isn't carved down out of a thick piece of spruce like uh gibson or stromberg or the angelico the fancier epiphones you know all borrowing from violin making tradition no martin wasn't going to do that so this is a flat top which is pressed into the curve using just the bracing it's like a hybrid in a lot of respects it doesn't sound like an arch top or a flat top it's its own thing later on in the decade they went to putting on a carved top they retained the flat back though this is the first year they used the f holes 1934. they have the advantage of looking cool but in this case the disadvantages of making it really difficult to repair something goes wrong inside because in this case the top is sinking it's a real roller coaster around the bridge i believe the braces have either failed structurally or they've come loose yeah there's one note here b flat which is causing a harmonic buzz inside from a size standpoint this is just over 14 inches wide at the lower bout which makes it pretty small for jazz orchestra work it's basically a double o i mean it's not a loud guitar there have been people who have converted these into standard flat top style guitars usually it's the upper end models with brazilian rosewood back and sides this is mahogany it's not as desirable it's not usually an elegant transition like the necks on these rather than being raised above the plane of the top they're flush and the angle rises with the curve so it's pretty extreme angle the heel body joint here has to be cut back a lot up at the top to tip it forward a bit and that removes a lot of material and also moves the body joint forward about a quarter of an inch which makes them look and play a little bit funny the action on this is yeah it's not bad could be a little lower the bridge is raised quite a bit and unequally so off the feet there to make up for that dip the main thing is it's got to be tuned down with extra extra light strings on it so it doesn't blow up and it's got that buzz so you know the owner wants me to fix it it's not going to happen through these f holes they're really skinny i can't even get my little finger in there i'm going to have to take the back off see what i can do with those braces might have to replace them and get the soundboard back into shape so this isn't a job for the faint of heart one thing about using the super light gauge strings on this is there's basically no relief in the neck here these are probably 10 to 52s or something like that so there's just not enough tension to pull the neck forward well there might be half a thousandth at the sixth fret there at least it's not back bowed that would be bad this thing has bar frets too some of you might not see those very often bar frets are an older style of fret that's basically rectangular in section rather than a modern t shape and they go into slots sort of the full width of the fret which can be fun i mean not a lot of people have the expertise in working with bar frets these days it's one way that um martin or other companies managed to sort of influence the relief in a neck back in a time before truss rods they could put in a fret that was wider or narrower and sort of push or compress the neck in one direction or the other and get some control over the relief in this case though the net the frets are in good shape there's plenty of height there it could take a little bit of crowning in some of these areas but on the whole they're pretty good having removed all the hardware i'll give the top surface a quick little cleaning here and then i'm going to make a little form then i'll use some not too sticky tape to cover the f holes because i'm actually going to cast the top of this guitar in plaster yes you heard right this is a mix of plaster of paris it's pretty loose at this point i haven't done casting in a very long time so my technique is probably off but it it's not that important in this case covering the top surface with some plastic here to protect the guitar obviously i'll nestle the guitar down into place and i'll leave that long enough so that there's a good impression it won't be there for the full cure time because plaster actually gets kind of warm as it's curing i don't want to subject it to too much heat and when i remove it there we have the surface of the top in negative so essentially i'm making a custom radius dish here for the top the sunken portion becomes a hill when it's in relief and i can carve that away and make a more idealized arch shape using scrapers at this point the plaster isn't rock hard it's kind of leather hard so it scrapes nice and easily make a nice smooth curve in order to take off the back i'll have to contend with the binding and you can see that the lacquer is actually in pretty good shape all over it so i'll have to score around it i'm going to try and save and reuse this old binding here you know it's 80 year old celluloid it's pretty thin just loves to crack but i'm going to see if i can do it right now i'm scoring the line between the binding and the side wood because if i didn't i just tried to pry the binding off i'd crack off huge sections of the side finish because the lacquer itself is very chippy as you can imagine one of the challenges in this case is going to be trying to reposition the back so that this binding will work because of the warp and the top and pressing new braces in there um it can be a challenge because the sides can do funny things they'll splay inwards or outwards in the back might you know change shape a little bit while it's off the body worst case scenario i won't be able to use this binding again i'll have to route a slightly wider groove and put a new piece on this is only about a sixteenth of an inch wide i'll trace around the inside of the binding as well i'll work the binding off using a very thin flexible and sharp pallet knife this is time consuming i've got my thumb here to counteract the pressure from the knife so that it doesn't get ahead of itself or crack or you know break the binding eventually i managed to get it all free in one piece which is very nice around the heels a bit of a tricky spot interesting the join seems to be sort of halfway down the upper bout on the player's side i'm not sure whether this is a natural joint if it had snapped there at some point in the past but you know that's where it is now to separate the back from the sides and the lining i'm going to trace around the glue line between those parts using a scalpel mahogany is an interesting wood in that it's softer than rosewood in some ways it's easier to separate but it's also prone to splitting too so i'm working a broad bladed palette knife into the seam and i'll push that trying to keep it parallel with the back all the way past the lining then i'll continue all the way around the body in troublesome areas like around the heel and tail blocks sometimes a little bit of denatured alcohol slipped into the joint here will it sort of desiccates the hide glue it makes it crispy and and even it's easier to separate once you get a little bit of alcohol into it that can be kind of messy but it's a help it's difficult to heat a thing like this up because you'd end up damaging the finish so it's usually a little bit of you know fibers left over when you're taking off the heel block area and when it gets to the braces on the inside which are housed into the lining what i do is i cut through them at an of quite an acute angle to the side that way i'm keeping the braces at full length but they're also free from the lining finally get to the area of the heel block here and i'm going to open it up the last few fibers come away tada some interesting things going on inside here it's pretty standard x-brace although it's much beefier than anything you would have seen in a flat top martin of this era they've got these little finger braces that cross in front of the eye which is probably a good structural move and a flat top is arched as much as this is there's a pencil mark here it looks like a scribble it's completely indecipherable it goes underneath this brace here's the really interesting thing it's a bit of a mystery to me there are four little round clean spots for lack of a better term they're sort of in a rectangular configuration here on the underside of the top about 5 16 of an inch in diameter and they are surrounded by this dirty looking stain that's almost almost looks like soot to me or like powdered graphite or you know charcoal or something i have no idea what these are for it's almost like when you're doing finishing and you up end something and put it on four little posts so that the finish can dry but it wouldn't be part of the finishing operation in this case because the guitar would have been fully assembled prior to spraying it's not like they're marking out brace locations i have no idea what these are if you do let me know well here we have the culprit there's a split through the lower half of the x brace on the base side here it extends about two and a half inches down from the crossing basically reducing its height by half in this really crucial area where downward pressure is the greatest and it goes all the way through the brace now this is interesting because the treble side of the x is made from quarter sawn material but this base side one here this side is flat sawn you can see the annular rings on top of this brace but they're on the side of the one that's split so was that grain direction intentional was this some design feature someone wants to loosen up the base side by making this less stiff or was it just being frugal with material as you know you can see over here they ran out of lining so they made up a short little piece of it's just a glue block to fill in the space works fine you're never going to see it unless it's 85 years later and your repair guy opening this thing up so is this frugality or design i don't know the x brace is a lap joint both sides have a notch cut into them and one overlaps and fits into the other and this leaves a little gap on both sides at the top that martin uses a piece of glue soaked linen to kind of secure and hold together in this case the linen has failed as well on the side with the split there's a crack through it here so this is really kind of free-floating and of course this you know in the area that's open here this is an end grain to a side grain glue joint so it's always going to be a bit sketchy so the linen works okay for standard flat tops but these guys here have a different kind of force at play on them the top is being pushed down by the bridge rather than being pulled up and sideways quarter-sawn versus flat sun why use quarter-sawn wood for braces irvine samaji did some tests a long time ago and determined that in spruce examples of similar density there really isn't much difference at all in the stiffness between them assuming that they're perfectly quarter-sawn and perfectly flat sun in historical loot construction all of the braces were flats on probably because they were using off cuts of split soundboard wood it was there and when they turned it up on edge it happens to be exactly the right size for their braces so that's what they used stiffness is one thing but i also have to question whether they move bow or cup in different ways depending on the orientation of the wood because what caused this crack was this an inherent weakness in the wood was it dryness was the bridge subjected to a shock like it was in the case one day and it fell over maybe a kid sat on it would this have happened if this was a quarter-sawn brace i can't answer that question but i can say that the new one i'm going to make is going to be quarter sun for my own peace of mind i started off thinking perhaps i could remove the braces in one piece so i separated them from the lining at the ends and i decided to try some d-glue goo there was quite a buildup of glue along the edges using heat and a palette knife i didn't like what was happening the d glue goo has acetic acid which is basically like vinegar reacts with the iron and the knife and creates a blue stain on the soundboard so i thought you know what it's taking a very long time and it's going to stain things and look ugly so i'm just going to cut them away i wasn't going to save the broken brace anyhow so i'm going to pair those away with a chisel and took off the bridge pad here which is very small and very thin i'm not sure what exactly it was supposed to be doing for the new braces i decided to split some spruce i like to split it because that gives you a true assessment of how the grain runs in the piece of wood and you know you can be sure of where the run out is after i've planed that down to align with the split i can cut off some pieces on the table saw here and know that the grain is going to be running continuous throughout the entire brace which makes for a stiffer and stronger brace then i can plane the braces to size these are slightly more than a quarter of an inch in width and they start off a full one inch in height for the material used in the bridge pad i decided to make it slightly thicker than what was in the guitar it was about fifty thousandths there this is about 65 000 thick i wanted more stiffness in that area i also decided to make it just a little bit wider i'm going to mark out the brace locations these have to be pretty precise i made a second bridge pad if we can call it that something that mirrors the other one in the opposite side of the x this is where the start of the dip in the sound board was happening and i really wanted to stiffen that area up this is thinner than the main bridge pad but it's you know i think it's a little added insurance i'm retaining the angle of the x which will help me in doing the joinery later on with the guitar back in the plaster cast and everything sitting inside my little knock down go bar deck i'll glue those pads in place the pads go in slightly oversized so if there's any slippage when it's gluing i can carve them back right to the line now on to carving the braces which is a really difficult task more difficult than you'd imagine even if you've built your own guitar because this isn't like it's sitting in a standard radius dish it's not a smooth curve this thing twists from one side to the other there are dips hills and valleys and things and it's got to fit perfectly so i start by carving some material off on both ends of the brace so that it'll sit down closer to where it should be i'm going to be honest this whole process took me about an hour and a half for each brace once you get it close you know i can start using carbon paper pulling that between the brace and the sound board to see where the high spots are get in there playing a little file a little plain a little again and eventually get it down to the point where i can't fit a feeler gauge in between the two parts finally i could mark and cut the lap joint fits together nice and snug then i'll glue those in place rather than using linen i'm going to glue on a pad of spruce which will bridge the joint between both halves of the x i think it's just a safer way of doing things it's what i do in my own guitars i glued it on now i'm planing it down it's about two millimeters thick when i'm done you can see that i've cut away a section of the lining there at the end of the brace because i'm going to want to put a glue block there when i'm done that will tie the brace into the side and make it good and firm and secure which is the same thing that martin does i don't like to leave the ends of the brace free floating and i'll carve these down basically i'm going for a sort of rounded cross section that tapers towards the ends similar to the original pattern all right i think i'm ready to put the back on should have one last look here before i do that this bracing is very similar to what came out of the guitar no major changes might be a little bit stronger here in the upper bout i didn't start the taper until farther up the arm so this section here is a bit more beefy which i think is a good thing hopefully it'll counteract the tendency for it to dip there in front of the bridge but the bottom side that's pretty much stock so i hope it does well should do the trick here's the real nail biter and all this sometimes they go together just fine other times they really they don't play nice i've had a couple of gibsons over the years that just sprang out into all kinds of weird directions so i was like having to push in on the lower bout and the upper bout in different areas trying to get it to equalize but i never really wanted to match the outline again it seemed pretty good the brace the braces all fit back into their pockets right so seems good so far now we get really lucky to have this workout for us there's one little section down here in the lower bout where a little bit of finish came off the body here i can match that up i'll be really happy oh it's feeling really good so far the question remains what's the best way of reassembling this do i try to stick the back on first and then put the binding on sometimes things can slip around right in this case it seems to fit so nicely when the two go on together and a binding this thin if i'm misaligned by you know a 64th of an inch that's a lot so i'm wondering i think the best thing to do is probably try to put both of them on at the same time which is not my usual way of doing things but i think it's going to work in this case it'll be the best idea i'm using fish glue why the super long open time it's longer than tight bond even and it gives you a lot of the properties of hide glue and i'm going to need some extra time in this case if i'm going to get the back on and the binding on in the same operation there'll be some maneuvering involved people ask if fish glue smells bad it really doesn't um there's a slight chemical smell to it unless you leave a dirty glue brush in a cup of water for three or four days that's when the fragrance starts but to be honest like five minute epoxy smells more like fish than fish glue to me so i've got the back in place it's sort of taped in the right spot and i'll work my way around the outline trying to keep the edge of the binding flush with the edge of the side put a little glue in the channel there this stuff is pretty easy to clean up if you get it within a day you can just sort of scrub it off of cold water so i'm not too worried about the excess this is a place where i wouldn't use super glue for instance because that would be a real nightmare i'm going to use regular green painters tape to hold the binding in place here that's kind of a judgment call but really although the back has got scratches on it the finish is actually in pretty good shape it's not flaking off if it was there's a potential that you'd remove a lot of it when it came time to remove the tape but in any case i have to stick it down somehow and this is what i'm going to use i'm feeling pretty confident i'll snug the back down using the spool clamps not going to crank these down too tight don't want to crack the finish don't want to leave big indentations in anything and don't want to clamp the tape so hard that it sticks too much it's the next day tape's coming off just fine with the aid of a hair dryer just gently warming it i'm going to do a little bit of touch-up with a marker this is not filling in the scratches this is just taking some of the visual impact away from them it's still there but your eye isn't immediately drawn to it so winsor newton burnt sienna matches pretty well with martin's mahogany do a little bit here on these weird side grain scratches a little on sort of rub it in dab it off either the binding shrank or the back got a little bit wider but there's about a two millimeter gap left in the seam between the edges of the binding so i'll mix up a little bit of black epoxy here and make a fill let that dry and level it off the slightly rough edges left over from scoring around the binding need some attention here so i'm going to paint using a little bit of it's a mixture of shellac and lacquer three-part shellac one part lacquer which brushes better than lacquer and is harder than shellac so this is my preferred touch-up material for this kind of thing just gonna wet both surfaces get it down in the crack and this will take probably about three coats because there's some chipping around the edges as well which i need to fill in all right i still have to put a couple more coats of lacquer on the edge over the next few days before i can sand and buff it up to a nice shine but it's back together enough for you to get an impression of what it'll be like there's much less dip in the top and it feels a lot more solid it's got 12 to 54 strings on it now and it's standing up to the tension just fine that annoying buzz is gone all in all it's a fun little guitar bar frets take a bit of getting used to you can feel the difference there's a distinct corner that your fingers bump up against as you're sliding up and down so i'll play a little bit we can all experience the joys of a pre-war martin [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: twoodfrd

Views: 238,017

Rating: 4.9417572 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 65s7h_e4P7w

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020