It's been a while since I made a blog post, a lot has happened except managing to write blog posts. Among other things, a week with the apprentice Daniel when we worked with a severely beaten Levin. In addition to the assault, it was also one of the least lavish Levin I have encountered.

Daniel is basically an electric guitarist and he has built several of them himself, he is also a very good guitarist. He hoped to be an apprentice for a week to learn more about acoustic guitars. The Levin had been bought at a flea market and had an ugly brush vein-paint with modern varnish on the whole body. The fretboard had also been painted. It was hardly recognizable as a Levin, but despite the fact that it lacked both a medallion and a serial number, there was a Levin burn stamp inside the bottom. Since it lacked a rosette and had seven (!) Twigs in the bottom, side and neck, it was probably a second sorting that was cheap when it was sold. The bridge was planed down and one of the tuning screw knobs was missing. I myself would not have bought it…

The neck in birch and the missing medallion indicate about 1925 as the year.

When we took it apart, there was a problem with the bottom as it was the thinnest I have seen on a Levin, about 2 mm on one of the edges. It went well, but took twice as long. The bottom had 5 braces instead of 4 to compensate for the thin bottom, probably a factory mistake that was saved and used in this guitar.

The positive was that the neck was narrow and comfortable, the thin bottom was also a good detail.

After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that the best alternative was to blow it completely clean from the ugly modern varnish and mount a new fingerboard in rosewood. A new bridge and new tuning screws were also necessary. To preserve a small memory from the previous renovation, an inlay similar to the decorative painting on top of the head would be inlayed in using ebony.

The work rolled on, we worked all week from 8:00 to 21:00 every day. Daniel clocked 73 hours for his job. Despite the diligence, we did not have time to get the guitar completely ready, it took a day and a half of work for me for the last production of the nut, saddle and adjustment. Removing the old paint stole a lot of time, it also did the job to apply the new paint. When I myself was hard hit by pollen that week, I went at half speed, but apart from that, most things went well without major mistakes.

Daniel had a try on most of the steps, except for some steps where it was a great risk of making a mistake or that take a long time for a beginner. For example, milling the trench for the carbon fiber rod or the manufacturing of the bridge.

Part of the rim was extremely thin with several repaired cracks, a 0,6 mm veneer was glued to the inside. In the picture, the bar under the fretboard is also glued as the last bar in the top. It was given an extra large radius to avoid having to glue a wedge under the fretboard.

Here are some pictures from the gluing of the bottom. The bottom got 5 new braces, a K&K mic was mounted in the top. Of course, the top got all new braces and a bridege plate in spruce with four plugs and buttons in bubinga around the string pin holes.

Here we see Daniel working with the inlay in ebony on top of the head copied from the old painting.

The top was sanded and scraped down carefully so as not to thin down the lid too much. Some ink drawings around the sound hole had to be left, plus other defects, because we thought it looked cool. The top was lightly colored golden orange with the help of a stain made of wood shavings from bubinga that were allowed to soak for a long time in pure alcohol. The bottom was stained with brown “Carl Johan” Herdin water based stain. Several coats of spirit varnish primer and spirit varnish were applied, one coat of spirit varnish at the bottom also got a brown color to match the darker color of the neck.

When I measured the intonation, in addition to the pollen allergy, I had a bout of stomach ache. Maybe that's why I did not see that the stroboscope tuner ended up in a "sweetener" mode without me noticing. I spent half a day measuring the world's strangest intonation before I realized that the tuner showed completely wrong values! I do not want to do that again.

When the saddle and nut were in place and after three days of vibration, it turned out that even a second grade Levin with seven twigs can sound good! Since Daniel is an electric guitarist, it had to be 2,3 mm for the 12th band and thick E-string and 1,5 mm for thin e.

A few days later, Daniel came by and picked up his finished guitar. It will surely be used, it sounded good when he played on it 🙂