100acrewood

Part 3: Finish

The guitar is together, it has been strung up once to make sure the bridge and neck are well aligned so cosmetic details and finish is all that is left.

The first task is blending in all the repairs. I tested two different dark mahogany aniline dyes, but in the end I simply took a small palette of water-colors and carefully transferred the dye bit by bit. The key is always to make it a touch darker, wait till it dries, repeat. Here the mahogany dowel replacements are dyed but the bit that is spliced in (from the original repair and it looks like mahogany as well) is not yet dyed. Sides blended in. Rebuilt body lip and dowels blended.

Nut is cut and pre-shaped. (It will be cut deeper shaped once again once glued on.)

The grain is filled with a mixture of pumice, boiled linseed oil, dark walnut aniline dye, and some lacquer. This actually differs from the standard 50's Les Paul grain filler which contains cherry dye. On a 60's SG the cherry color comes from the lacquer, not from the grain filler.

First layer of Dartfords cherry lacquer on. It is a perfect match to the body, overall a touch less yellow than the '07 SG Classic next to it. (Notice how different the neck to body transition is.)

Headstock is sprayed over with black nitrocellulose and the logo is scraped clean. Some of existing dings are covered over, I'll scrape the black lacquer off and they'll look like dings again in the end. After all, it's a 53 year old guitar.

Aging the Kluson double line/double ring tuners to not look shiny and new. People do this with muriatic acid, but vinegar works perfectly well. Sand the surface a little with 2000 or higher grit sand-paper to create irregularities on which vapors can condense. Then take a plastic container, fill the bottom with vinegar, close, and put into a microwave for long enough for the vinegar to almost boil. Open, quickly put in another container with nickel coated parts, close and wait 10 minutes, then wash. This knocks the brand-new sheen off but doesn't look like Rory Gallagher found it in a ditch.

I tried repairing the holes left after not too successful vibrola removal with a combination of colored wood putty and mahogany slices. It does look better but not by much.

Leveling and polishing frets.

Plugging and re-drilling mounting holes. They were all stripped and fixed by a jamming in pieces of metal.

Replacing the newer scratchy pot. I wonder whether this cover is original as it is a little too thin.

Polishing the new unbleached bone nut.

Complete:

And it is done and it plays great. The last of the golden age of electric guitars. By the end of 1965 neither Gibson nor Fender used Brazilian rosewood and old growth mahogany was mostly gone as well, century of logging having decimated the rainforests of South and Central America. Decrease in quality due to a shift to mass production in both companies became forever tied in people's minds to the change of materials and the mystique of old instruments grew with their collectible value.

Credits

A detailed restoration of an old instrument by a complete amateur is only really possible due to the wealth of information found online. While it is difficult to thank everyone, I received a lot of help from people on TDPRI, mylespaul.com, used the wealth of information on guitarhq.com. Tom Bartlett was very kind to me and sold me difficult to find celluloid binding, and I learned a lot about 50's Gibson construction from Gil Yaron's 1959 Les Paul build thread.

Restoration of the case is still a work in progress, most notably due to my inability to source a sufficiently good reproduction of the original orange crushed velvet.

Part 4: Case