Page 1 of 4
My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 12:13 am
by Ben-Had
A friend got this from a friend's widow. The guitar is a 1969 Gibson Heritage. His friend sat on it and cracked the neck block which caused the neck to pull away taking part of the top with it, It had several other cracks in the top. To make matters worse he had tried to refinish it using a drill sander and then covered it up with Minwax finish, He moved the nut over to try to get some of the strings to play (it was way off). He wanted to keep it all original, no new top. The first 3 pics are the condition it was in when it came to me. I'll post the process so tell me if you see mistakes or ways I could have done it better. I'd like to improve. It was a lot of fun and some hard work too.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 12:20 am
by Ben-Had
I guess I started by removing all the frets and repairing the chip out. It is an ebony finger board. Those suckers were really in there and removing them caused major chip out.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 7:39 am
by tippie53
very nice
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:49 am
by Ben-Had
tippie53 wrote:very nice
Thanks John.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:53 am
by Ben-Had
Next I removed the pick guard (I think it had been off before), truss rod cover and bridge and cleaned them up.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:56 am
by Ben-Had
Then on to neck removal.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:59 am
by Ben-Had
Here you can see the neck block crack and the fact the guitar is laminated Brazilian Rosewood (part of the laminate came out when I removed the neck block).
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:03 am
by Ben-Had
Then I started taking off the Minwax finish, Yikes!
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:06 am
by Ben-Had
Here you can see where he took a drill sander to the top.
Re: My first major rebuild
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:10 am
by Ben-Had
Sanding completed.