Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi to you all,

If you take a look at my website you will see a page heading:

Lyon Healy Circa 1900s Parlor Plan Download.

There is a free downloadable plan available in a small pdf file format

www.hamleyfineguitars.com

This guitar is a restoration project and the top was damaged beyond repair. As a new top will be fitted once the old one was removed I was able to take some measurements inside the box. I spent considerable time carefully taking dimensions and drew up a hand written plan of the guitar. As most of you know it is not very often you get the opportunity to get close up and personal with such an old instrument like this one so I decided to create a plan of it. A friend and forum member Steve at www.anzlf.com used my hand written drawing and created a full size to scale plan using CAD. I thank him very much for his time an effort.

Please feel free to download the plan as I have gained so much great advice and information from this forum since I started guitar building in 2005 and it is good to be able to contribute a bit back to our guitar building community. The plan is to scale but there may be some dimensions that are not perfect as there were a few specs that had to be estimated.

If you have any comments or questions please contact me at my website.

Enjoy

Cheers

Alan

If you are interested in the restoration project please read on.

The old guitar is very fragile but it is in reasonable condition for its age. It has a serial number stamped on the spruce tail block however even with that information I haven’t been able to ascertain its exact age. If someone knows or can point me in the right direction of further information about the guitar please contact me through my website. The guitar has a spruce top and Brazilian Rosewood back, sides, bridge, head plate and fingerboard. The guitar top has sustained lots of damage and the rosewood is very brittle with several cracks in the back and sides which I will be able to be fix or stabilise. Also the tail block has been split as the guitar at some stage had been dropped on its butt. The machine heads are in good condition as are the frets with little or no ware. Usually these oldies the frets are well pitted especially around the first few frets. The neck is a large V shape and made from mahogany.

The damage at the soundhole area and inside the box to the transverse brace looks to me like it has been caused by a rodent like a rat. The top, transverse brace and tail block are all made from spruce and have been chewed by something. There where no strings fitted when the guitar arrived, the bridge had been removed and there were three handmade rosewood bridge pins still with the guitar. This guitar I believe was built for gut strings and there is no wear from strumming on the spruce top or ware spots where your arm goes over the lower bout when playing. This tells me it hasn’t been played very much. The guitar looks like it has been stored for many years and it has been home for a small animal. My reasoning a rodent lived in the box was confirmed as I found lots of grey hairs inside the box when the top was removed. The machine head screws look like they have never been taken off.
So other than the top damaged beyond resurrection and a few cracks it is in good condition and a fine candidate for a restore project.

If you would like to follow the restoration you can follow it on my website or at this address:

http://www.anzlf.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5250

Thanks for your interest.

Cheers

Alan

Thank you for that Alan!

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Cheers for the plans Alan. On ya, mate!

Nice one Alan, thank you.
Looking forward to seeing the completed restoration.

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Nice plans. Sure looks like a purfling addict's dream
What type of strings would you use on that? Looks rather lightly braced for my usual light guages. But with only 24.21" scale length...I dunno

Alan,
took advantage of the free download. Thanks! and I enjoyed your website and checking out the restoration job you're doing. You are a brave man; I wouldn't have known where to start.

Its a pleasure guys I am glad you like the plan.

Quine: Yep the binding is going to be a fun time to get right. I will use hhg one or two maple coloured strips at a time. Should be ok and not too stressful. I sent off an email to Robbie O'brien recently and asked his advice on string gauges and a few other questions. As the true gentleman we know he is he suggested some silk and steel for the little guy. The Rosewood sides around the upper bout area are only 1.5 mm in places and with a spruce neck and tail block it is a very light weight guitar so the slik and steel should sing nicely and to not place too much stress on the guitar.

mkellyvrod: The restoration has come along nicely and the fact that it was built with HHG made it very easy to dis-assemble. The only hing is as just stated the Brazilian Rosewood is thin in places and very brittle. I even caused a crack myself clamping and fixing another crack. So care and patience and it is not so daunting. It is a great feeling to be up so close and personal with a guitar 100 years old. This one will be left in my will for my 1 year old grandson. He always loves the sound of music so I am keeping my fingers crossed he shows an interest in guitars later on. If not, it will be something to remind him of me, Poppy Al.

Cheers

alan

Its a pleasure guys I am glad you like the plan.

Quine: Yep the binding is going to be a fun time to get right. I will use hhg one or two maple coloured strips at a time. Should be ok and not too stressful. I sent off an email to Robbie O'brien recently and asked his advice on string gauges and a few other questions. As the true gentleman we know he is he suggested some silk and steel for the little guy. The Rosewood sides around the upper bout area are only 1.5 mm in places and with a spruce neck and tail block it is a very light weight guitar so the slik and steel should sing nicely and to not place too much stress on the guitar. I forgot to mention that the new top is an X brace design and not ladder braced like the original. That will give it better structural integrity and keep it going for another 100 years

mkellyvrod: The restoration has come along nicely and the fact that it was built with HHG made it very easy to dis-assemble. The only hing is as just stated the Brazilian Rosewood is thin in places and very brittle. I even caused a crack myself clamping and fixing another crack. So care and patience and it is not so daunting. It is a great feeling to be up so close and personal with a guitar 100 years old. This one will be left in my will for my 1 year old grandson. He always loves the sound of music so I am keeping my fingers crossed he shows an interest in guitars later on. If not, it will be something to remind him of me, Poppy Al.

Cheers

alan