My playing buddy Björn Sohlin brought the family's party instrument from the early 1920s onwards for repair. It was, to put it mildly, ravaged – in fact, one of the most abused guitars I've ever seen! Here are some pictures of it before the renovation, I managed to remove the duct tape from the bottom and install the loose saddle, pegs and tuning screws before I took the pictures.
It had been repaired before, one of the tuning pegs was missing a knob, but had a metal hook soldered in instead (didn't get it in the picture). I've never seen such a tattered fretboard, several mm deep play pits! The year was uncertain as the serial number couldn't be deciphered, but the provenance said early 1920s which is a good guess. On the bottom was Levin's brand mark, a small piece of the original label from the dealer that says Finspång – I've seen those before. And a nice repair label from 1977. I hope there were some other amateurs who nailed the bottom and used Karlsson's glue as glue! Someone had also brushed on some kind of modern varnish on the bottom and sides, luckily not on the lid or neck.
My mission with this one was to keep as much of the weathered look as possible, but make it fully playable. The record-worn board was to be kept, the planed and brown-stained bridge and top nut were replaced with originals from previous renovations. The neck was given a carbon fiber rod and the ribs were replaced as usual.
The fretboard was removed with heat from my travel iron, a Stewmac “double knife” and some water. I have acquired small handy scraper, which came in handy for scraping off the carpenter's glue that had first been soaked up with a wet paper towel. Someone had set fire to one edge of the fretboard!
The neck had been reglued a couple of times, a lot of wood from the neck block came with it.
Inside there was a lot of glue and also some nails through the bottom!
The reused original stable from a previous renovation had too large pin holes. The holes were plugged and the black paint was sanded off. The too high stable was planed down to the right height and flattened out on top for a stable leg. The old stable had two screws that were not needed.
The neck was poplar and surprisingly straight, but the carbon fiber rod is a must. Since I kept the fretboard with its fret placement and glued the bridge in the same place, I had to make the neck attachment 4 mm deeper to make room for an intonated bridge leg instead of the inferior construction with a long fret as a bridge leg at the front of the bridge. The whole guitar became 4 mm shorter, but now the intonation is correct.
The fingerboard's pits were filled with superglue – half a bottle! The entire surface between the 1st and 2nd frets is now made of plastic. Here I made a mistake, or rather learned something new, there were air bubbles in the thick glue at the bottom. You should use thin superglue first of all to fill in the air-filled pores in the wood before applying the thick layer of glue, I was taught. But considering the condition of the guitar in general, I just added a little more patina and it was as it was 🙂 The board got new frets.
The modern varnish was easy to peel off as it did not adhere well to the old varnish. Half of the varnish could be removed by taping on and off with ordinary packing tape, the rest had to be scraped off with a razor blade. The entire guitar was then stained with water-based stain and/or quickly oxidized with potassium permanganate in all the dings. After that, the entire guitar received a coat of alcohol varnish which was then mattified with steel wool and hand-polished to a reasonable shine.
The bottom was thinned in a roller polish, but before that the two labels were saved. The lid was also thinned by half a mm on the inside. The repair label from 1977 was glued further into the guitar. Apart from the oversaddle tuning and segmented bridge leg, it was a complete GammelGura renovation, it got a label to complement the others. The bottom had shrunk considerably and came loose in the middle joint. To compensate for the 3 mm that was missing in width, the bottom was bound all around in rosewood.
It sounded OK when it was finished, but I missed the clean tone from the over-saddle tuning. The guitar has been presented to the family who liked how it turned out. It will certainly be handled at more parties in the future, hopefully it will last another 100 years 🙂 The heel cap had been forgotten when I took the pictures, but was glued back before it was delivered.
After the paint job, the serial number became clearer. I think I can guess 34420, which means 1917.
