I built my first guitar in the fall of 1994, thanks to Harry Fleishman’s International School of Lutherie. He was a great teacher, and I learned a lot from him – especially things like “get your hand away from the saw!” and “you realize you’re about to jam that chisel into your finger, don’t you?” Of course, I did not, and I still have the scar from the chisel point on my right index finger…
After a long layoff, I’ve got the bug again. I at first decided to build an archtop using Bob Benedetto’s DVDs and book. But, the archtop I envision doesn’t look like the one in the book/DVDs, and I’m afraid if I made too many design departures I would just end up with a big pile of expensive firewood.
While thinking about this, I ran across a Weissenborn kit from Australian Tonewoods. A lot of the work is already done (bending sides & bindings, joining top and backs) and I play Hawaiian music. So I thought I would sit on this one for a while.
While letting that idea marinate, I ran across a “luthier’s special” guitar: a Gower or Grammer birdseye dreadnaught in very sad shape. Take a look. You might notice there is no back:
After running the pics by a repair guy/luthier I know, here’s the draft list of things to do. The list may get much longer depending on what it looks like in person.
- Build a mold to make sure the sides stay where they ought to while I’m doing the work.
- New back. Try to find either 2- or 3-piece birdseye back.
- New back linings/kerfing.
- New binding.
- Check out those braces – at least some cleanup is in order. It looks like someone started roughing in the braces, went out to lunch, and came back to find someone had slapped the top on a body.
- See if a neck reset/refret is in order. The divots on the fingerboard might be a good indicator that fretwork is needed. The neck may be some sort of bolt-on, as it looks like there’s a bolt sticking out of the neck block. It was built in the 70’s, so maybe.
- It looks like the guitar might have been finished with the neck attached. Complicates the reset issue.
- Take off the adhesive where the pickguard used to be.
- It would be hard to get the back to match the sunburst on the back and sides, so a refinish might be in order. However, I like the wear on the top – a sign of a well-used instrument, so I’ll have to figure out the balance between full refinish, partial refinish, or no refinish
A big list, but it only cost me $150. If I screw it up royally, hopefully I will have learned something. And if I do an all right job, hopefully it sounds good.
I gotta figure out what to call it, though. Gower/Grammer did all of the hard work (Gower, most likely). I thought about putting a label that said something along the lines of a Bushouse restoration of a Gower, or a Gower restored by Bushouse. But I intend to put my own mark on this guitar – and hopefully on a headstock inlay as well.
Of course, then I have to figure out what name/logo to use on my guitars…
Exactly what I am talking about. I want to build one of those double points one day.