And so it begins.....F-50R repair/resurrection.

[kostask]

Wood strips are glued in. the new wood strips have been scraped/planed/sanded level with the surrounding wood of the soundboard. Mixing of lacquer has begun to try and match the existing nitro.

The spruce piece that you are seeing is the piece that the wood strips were cut out of. The luthier says the lacquer colour is not right yet, he needs to work on it some more. The test patch at the top left of the spruce piece is getting closer to the right shade and darkness, but not quite there

 

[wileypickett]

Beautiful job!

If your luthier can get a close match, great, but I'm with you in terms of being OK if the repairs show. You're not trying to fool anybody, you're trying to make the guitar solid, construction-wise, and fully playable again.

Some luthiers pencil in details about the repairs they've done somewhere inside the guitar. Is your luthier planning something like this?

Glenn

 

[kostask]

He normally writes up a report that goes with the guitar, which I will be keeping in the gear pocket of the guitar case. He just normally pencils in a date and signs it underneath somewhere inside the guitar.

He's a stickler for getting the colour right on repairs; I am fairly OK for getting it close, but he wants it just right.

 

[Cougar]

Wood strips are glued in....

I wondered what the heck you were going to do with that. Amazing!

 

[sailingshoes72]

Your luthier has some wonderful skills. He did an amazing job of lining up the grain in the wood strips with the grain of the top. I look forward to further posts in this repair/resurrection thread!

 

[HeyMikey]

Indeed. Very impressive work so far.

 

[ezstrummer]

This is great work. More pics please....

 

[kostask]

A couple of close ups:

I was visiting with him today. He is having issues with matching up the colour of the new wood with the old. He says the new wood is so pale that no matter how he tries to match up the lacquer, it goes too yellow. He's still working on it.

The grain lines match up well in most cases, in some they don't, due to the old wood and new wood not having the same growth rate from year to year.

 

[Stuball48]

I think it is turning out very well and I enjoy the front row seat.

 

[kostask]

I am pretty pleased. My luthier buddy has extremely high standards, though, and I have no intention of rushing him. He'll get it figured out, I'm sure.

 

[wileypickett]

Tricky. If you find a tint for the lacquer for the new strips that matches the original top, that tint will be too dark for the exposed areas of the original top.

Do you apply one color tint the new strips and one to the old? And how do you keep the two from bleeding into each other?

 

[kostask]

He is trying to find a stain for the new wood, and a tinted lacquer for the old wood. Idea is to stain the new wood to get it as close as possible to the old wood, wait for it to dry completely, and then spray the entire area with the tinted lacquer, followed by (eventually), a respray of the entire top. I will ask about the bleeding aspect next time I talk to him. He was joking about putting a Sunburst on the top.

Also, for those who were asking about the crack in the brace (as per the picture in post #77 in this thread), he checked the brace, and it has already been glued and stable. He says it will be really hard to get the old glue out, and as it is stable, he will leave it as is.

 

[GGJaguar]

Your luthier is showing great care with the repairs so the guitar should be great when it is finished.

 

[kostask]

Spent some time with the luthier today, mostly on other matters.

We did talk about the F50R briefly. He is suspecting that the newly added wood, because it was scraped/planed/sanded down to become level, is lighter/brighter than it was when it was first put in. He is contemplating sanding down the surrounding wood to see if a better colour match is possible.

Also, the old bridge is being taken off. It has been re-glued previously, but was re-glued with a water based glue, so removal is not going to be too bad. Bridge plate is rosewood, and in good shape. He says that the old bridge was removed, and thinned to accommodate the Barcus Berry pickup. The thinning out process left the bottom (floor, if you will) of the saddle slot so thin that it broke through under the tension of the strings. This also lead to a least one of the bridge cracks (the smaller of the two). He thinks the larger bridge crack was due to a too wide bridge saddle, with contributing factors being the uneven bridge slot (making saddle very tight in some spots, and sort of loose in others), and the very thin bottom/floor of the saddle slot.

 

[gilded]

Kostas, I think a lot of us here enjoy a good relationship with competent luthiers. As an observation your 'luthier guy' not only fits into that category, he doesn't mind stopping the work to take a gazillion pics of every stage of the repair, which makes it really easy for the rest of us to see exactly what is going on and to root you and your luth' on to success.

Keep those cards and letters coming, K-man!

Harry aka gilded

 

[gilded]

Big K', when I was talking about your luthier's skills, I should have mentioned that YOU, sir, have excellent reporting skills, which certainly keeps the whole ball of was going for The Gentle Readers who await your latest addition to the Magnum Opus that spreads before us.

There are plenty of excellent writers here on the forum (you folks know who you are!), so it's not like you're all alone out there but I think that your ability to tell this story very much contributes to our enjoyment of same. Thanks!

Now, where's the 'Like' button when you need it?

 

[kostask]

Gilded/Harry:

Thanks for the kind words. I was getting a little concerned that the thread was getting a little long, with all the pictures I have included. I think they are the easiest way to show what is happening, and the progress.

 

[davismanLV]

Not to long at all. I always enjoy a journey through repairs. Back when I was doing furniture matching up new and old wood was always a huge challenge. I remember the guy I was doing work for was a friend of Joni Mitchell's and he took me up to her house to look at kitchen chairs that needed repair. Stretchers that went between the legs on two of the chairs around the kitchen table had broken and one of them missing entirely. I took 'em home and had another guy I worked with turn new replacement pieces and he used alder instead of maple. The finish was like a honey maple color but they were so old that getting the right color was critical. Knowing what an artist she is I really labored to get the color exact on those replacement pieces. Don helped me being an artist himself and we took a typical honey maple and then added alcohol based tints to get the color close, knowing that once the finish went on it would get darker. Luckily I managed to get the color dead on and she actually called me to say thanks and that she couldn't tell which ones had been repaired. I floated on that phone call for at least a week. I did some other work for her after that and she came to my workshop one time to look at these huge mahogany doors she bought in Santa Fe and was considering different options for their use. Such a nice lady.

Anyway, the repairs are always interesting. Getting the color of the new wood right and then knowing how it's gonna react with finish on it is a real trick. Take photos, keep 'em coming!!

 

[davismanLV]

p.s. - what I'm seeing in the color of the old wood are hints of gray and beige (or brown). So when you put an aged lacquer over the new wood it's gonna come up way more yellow. Might try doing some gray/beige tones on the new wood to match the old and then try the aged lacquer over both on samples. I'm sure he knows what he's doing, but I'm seeing some light gray/beige tint over the new pieces to bring them closer to the old spruce. Just throwing that out there.....

 

[Badger]

Can you take photos of the X bracing and tone bars?