1880's Martin 0-28 Restoration
I bought this old Martin guitar about two years ago. When I got it the back was off, the bridge and tuners were missing and it was a bit beat up all over. The top was a bit torn up in the bridge area. I bet some of that wood is still stuck to the original bridge somewhere. At the top edge about an inch of original ivory binding and about three quarters of an inch of herringbone trim was missing as well.
This is how the guitar looked when I got it. Those little white dots on the inside of the top are circles of parchment used to reinforce old crack repairs. The bright white maple biteplate is a replacement.
Here you can see the new spruce I have patched in under the bridge gluing area. As I sanded the new wood level with the old I caught the unmistakable smell of Douglas Fir.
Here you can see the missing piece of ivory top binding. The new looking herringbone trim was my first attempt to make my own, which proved to be harder than it looks. I was trying to match the color of the old herringbone which is more brown that black. I may try bleaching some new black herringbone to see how that looks.
The back was in pretty good shape cosmetically. It had two minor cracks and a few of the brace ends were loose. The major problem here was that the back had reversed its curvature. Almost all flat top guitar are built with an arch in the back. Some modern builders are building tops this way too. The arch on this back cupped the wrong way.
To correct the back arching I clamped up the back on two different radius dish work boards for about a year. The surface of these work boards are carved out to different radii. I have a 28 foot radius dish I use for tops and a 15 foot dish that I use for backs. I gently heated the back and the back braces with a hairdryer ever week or so, to help the braces settle back into place. The two sticks holding it down are thin strips of cedar which are wedged against a ceiling I built 2 and a half feet above the surface of this workbench. This type of clamping tool is called a go-bar deck.
The peg head had been drilled out for classical guitar tuners and who ever did it was pretty sloppy. There was a lot of tear out in the cedar neck and the holes are too irregular to try and dowel. I am going to cut back the rounded cheeks inside the headset and graft in some new wood and predrilled the tuner holes for a nice set of modern vintage style replacement tuners.
I will be adding more pictures and information as this project progresses, stay tuned.
