My first major rebuild

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 12:13 am

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.

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 12:20 am

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.

tippie53 · Post by **tippie53** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 7:39 am

very nice

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:49 am

tippie53 wrote:very nice

Thanks John.

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:53 am

Next I removed the pick guard (I think it had been off before), truss rod cover and bridge and cleaned them up.

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:56 am

Then on to neck removal.

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:59 am

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).

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:03 am

Then I started taking off the Minwax finish, Yikes!

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:06 am

Here you can see where he took a drill sander to the top.

Ben-Had · Post by **Ben-Had** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:10 am

Sanding completed.

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My first major rebuild

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