Scott Sullivan's "Katrina" Guitar #2
Day 1
Scott, a former customer of mine, had 2 guitars nearly ruined in Hurricane Katrina. I finished the D1 first and got it back to him in time for Christmas. I'll put pictures of it at the bottom of this page (or on another page). On this page, though, is a day by day account of the repair of the second guitar- a Martin 00-15.
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This guitar had some damage to the top, but the back was in excellent condition, so I decided to remove the top. First, I had to remove the neck, and since it was loose, the bridge. After these were off, I removed the top. Starting at the already swollen and split areas, I carefully worked my way around with a hot spatula and a damp sponge, working a little moisture into the seam and then applying the hot spatula. It took about an hour and I had the top off. Here you can clearly see some water damage in the neck block area. Roughly 11 am. |
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This is what the top bracing looked like. As you can see, the braces are severely loose and the top is warped. It'll all pull back together, though. |
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The top of the guitar is split. Oddly, the bridgeplate and rearmost brace are still glued solidly in place. Also, the top fit the body really well. Because of this, I don't want to pull the top together too much or it won't fit back on the body. I'll deal with this split some other way- either a splice or something else. It will likely change as I get everything glued back down, anyway. |
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You can see from this shot that the entire upper bracing is pretty much disconnected from the top. You can also see that my workbench is a mess. |
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Time to start gluing braces down. I started with the upper bout. The easiest thing was to just clamp it to my workbench top. In doing so, the top flattened out considerably and the seam started coming back together. Once again, I'm using Luthier's Mercantile white glue for the repair. The bottle is peeking into the photo in the upper right corner. It's just after noon at this point. Time for lunch. |
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At 4-5 pm, I relaxed the clamps and started working on the side. You can really see the split top seam here. |
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And at 8:30 pm, I glued the other side. There's some glue
squeeze-out peeking out there. No big deal, not on this guitar! Yes, I would like a go-bar deck....this works alright, but if I had a go-bar deck, I could probably just glue and clamp all these braces in one shot. Unfortunately, I don't have one and I really just don't have the shop space right now, either. I'm working in my house 90% of the time, but am really considering buying/building an exterior shop this spring. It would free up some space in the house and give me a quieter, more dedicated working area. Gonna cost $$$, though. End of Day 1. |
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Well, almost....right before going to bed at 11 pm, I decided to glue and clamp the neck block. I used a jack to open it up and that made it easy to get the glue in there! As you can see the 15 has a laminated neck block. Interestingly, though, this one is laminated parallel to the front of the guitar while on the D1, it's laminated perpendicular. The D1's block is carved out of a single piece of laminated stock and the 15 is two pieces (top and bottom) glued together. |
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Alright, NOW I can go to bed! |