Retop; This Ain't No Vintage Martin!

[Colin S]

Joe, that's looking great, I'm glad you're going with the Sustaire bracing, it just 'looks right' doesn't it, and you say a floating bridge so are we going to get another one of those 'vintage' looking tailpieces? Can't wait to hear Goodnight Irene on it.

By the way the Venere is ladder braced, so maybe I can get you to renovate the top for me!

Colin

[the Padma]

You see, some of us, like Dave and Grant get paid to work on nice vintage Martins, and some of us have to pay to rework pieces of junk. I'm sure there's a reason and lesson in there somewhere, but I don't want to dig that deeply.

Joe

Oh Joe,

No need to dig deeply, is just luck of the draw, karma or the fickle finger fairy of faith favouring some one else. Oh well.

Pay no attention and have fun rebuilding the beater.

blessings
the
Padma

[Joe Sustaire]

Now we tackle that neck joint. As I've mentioned the dovetail was less that 3/8" thick and just didn't seem to me to be sufficient, so I'm changing it over to a bolt on.


I drilled hole in the heel to glue in this 1/2" dowel to give my 1/4" hanger bolt something to screw into other than endgrain, and I carved some v-cuts into to give the excess glue a little room to squeeze out. You can also see here the t-bar neck reinforcement this has.


And this is how the neck attachment looks. I carved off the dovetail angles so it would be able to slide straight in.


Fitting to the neck-block.


And top cut out to allow for the t-bar.


Notches cut for the neck end of the tone bars and the ends of the upper transverse brace, all other brace ends die out before the lining.


And the top is glued and clamped.

All for now,
Joe

[the Padma]

Look like a real nice vice you got there Joe.

Real nice.


blessings

[Pat Foster]

Joe,

Looks like a great project. Nice work, too!

Pat

[Kim]

Great work as always Joe. Going in to these old beaters can be fun and rewarding in more ways than one. Yes you can end up with a great sounding guitar out of a dull bland plywood box, but more than that it give you a chance to experiment and play around with some of your own ideas and all that knowledge can only help your own full builds.

Well done mate

[Joe Sustaire]

Thanks guys! The old vice is one my dad picked up at the flea market one time. It's an old Emmert pattern maker's vise that tilts, rotates etc., pretty cool.


Here's the closed box.

Used my tower type binding cutter to route the binding channels,



sure beats routing them with a hand-held router, takes away a lot of the stress.

Glued in cream plastic bindings to match the f/b binding, with Weldon #16. Then after a day to set up, scraped and sanded the box. In trying to level the sides I sanded thru the stained veneer here and there and after looking at it a couple of days, decided I liked the camo/distressed look. Stained and sanded the top, quite a bit of runout here and there, so it came out looking pretty distressed also.

Did a quickie french polish on the box, fit the neck a few times and strung it up to see if it was gonna work. And I think it's going to be all right. Very loud, lots of bass, much bigger box than my GC 12.

So, broke it back down, mixed some epoxy to fill the slot in the f/b support that the neck t-bar fits in, and glued the fret-board overhang down with white glue.

You can get an idea of the "busker special" finish in this shot.

Thanks for watching,
Joe

[Michael Boyle]

I drilled hole in the heel to glue in this 1/2" dowel to give my 1/4" hanger bolt something to screw into other than endgrain, and I carved some v-cuts into to give the excess glue a little room to squeeze out. You can also see here the t-bar neck reinforcement this has.




Thanks Joe . That dowel is a great idea. In the past I drilled the holes in the end grain and filled them with very thin CA glue and let it sit a percolate overnight. After that I just prayed.I'll bet you never thought you would be answered prayer.
Michael.