Part 2: Rebuild
So we have the guitar separated into the body, the neck, and the fretboard, with most of the extra wood removed. The goal is to put it together again, as close to original as possible. That means rebuilding the neck tenon and neck pocket, rebuilding the headstock veneer and inlays, but mostly- rebuilding the shaved-down neck. Mr Dowel (or someone else) had a go at it with sandpaper and managed to make it thinner but also narrower.
The frets (it had a terrible refret) are pulled out and original inlays removed. The fretboard was sanded down
during a refret in 90's (the guitar came with a bill that even listed that) and that brought down the original inlays
to translucent. To make matters worse, the glue was mostly separated and fretboard oil seeped underneath
giving them an ugly brown color. Luckily the exact celluloid material is still obtainable, made by a factory in
Italy that closed only recently.
The original inlays were thin and radiused, I replaced them with thicker solid blocks as I needed to make the
routes deeper anyway. Routing was done by hand with a dremel router base. The gaps around the inlays are filled
only partially - on an old guitar the celluloid shrinks and leaves gaps and I did not want to have them look like
they have been installed yesterday.
Jescar FW51108 wire was chosen for the re-fret. At .108"x.051" it will match the original after a fret level.
I glued the frets in with fish glue, few at a time. Fish glue was a really useful adhesive throughout,
especially for seamless non-load-bearing repairs. (It can be cleaned with water, but dries to a glass-like
solid.)
A jig to mahogany dowels to replace the oak ones in the neck. Tuner holes too need to be plugged and re-drilled.
The tuners that came with it were "U.S.A." stamped Grovers from the 60's which need a bigger hole. These were
actually really smooth and quite wonderful (much better than newer Grovers I have on some guitars), but they are
not original and are also quite heavy, which may cause issues on a typically neck-heavy SG.
The perhaps most difficult part of the repair is to bring the neck back to original dimensions. I added
a ~1mm thin Honduran mahogany veneer both under the headstock veneer and between the fretboard and the neck.
I did almost all with a Quangsheng No.102 plane depicted below. I really like it, it lets one easily work to 0.01" (.2mm)
precision, taking off transparent slices of wood.
Veneers glued and tuner holes re-drilled. Holly veneer with new inlays below.
Rebuild of neck pocket and tenon.
Inlaying of logo and crown. I rough cut out the holes with exacto knife, mixed epoxy with lamp black and filled
in. Retrospectively hide glue would have been a possibly better option - epoxy left little bubbles which
I later had to fill in with dyed hide glue.
Preliminary fret level and gluing the binding on. The binding is old stock celluloid and difficult to source
(modern bindings are ABS). Per Gil Yaron the best gluing method is to dilute celluloid cement with acetone.
I tried that but could not achieve solid adhesion and ended up using CA glue instead.
I thought I'd bring the binding down to correct thickness with a Dremel. Bad idea, not only did it not produce
a straight surface, the hot shavings also flashed momentarily. Not really trying to set the guitar on fire
I looked for other approaches...
And what worked was a chisel-scraper jig:
Tortoiseshell side dots. Yes... I drilled in 1 hole on the twelfth fret by accident. Easily fixable with
binding shavings dissolved in acetone.
Perfect neck angle.
Finishing the rebuild of the neck pocket. All of the epoxy from the previous build is out and the lip as well
as sides are rebuilt out of Honduran mahogany.
To make the fit perfect I made make-shift carbon paper with a pencil and used it to mark high points in the
fit and filed them down until the fit was perfect.
Mixing hide glue (first let granules soak in water, then heat up in a decommissioned slowcooker).
And gluing the fretboard on.
The re-bound fretboard was still a sliver wider than the neck so I glued on two very thin stripes of mahogany
to the side. I used fish glue as it is not load bearing and it is very easy to work with and leaves no residue.
The by now second re-finish of the neck almost stripped the serial number on the back of the headstock. It was
stamped into the wood with metal stamps. I did not manage to find anyone still making the particular font so
I had to improvise. Tracing numbers from a dozen '64-'66 images this is the font.
And here are stamps cut out by a laser cutter, tested, and applied.
Neck is glued in with hide glue.
And stop-tail bushings installed. The original after-market installation was pretty crooked and had no bushings.
That is a quite silly thing to do but it turned out to be a blessing of sorts as I could simply re-drill the larger
holes in the correct position.
Here is the old and new bridge/stop tail. The old bridge was original, but the saddles were notched in an
irregular pattern and the bridge was sanded down from below. And it was a 60's wire ABR-1 which isn't really
worth it tonally. The saddles were probably not original anyway, they should have been nylon rather than metal.
The new hardware is by Faber. Nickel ABR-1 with nickel coated brass saddles and aluminium stop-tail.
