Restoring an old classical guitar

My friend Meckey gave this old classical guitar. It was in pretty bad shape and I decided to restore it.

First of all the neck head was broken, so I removed the keys and glued it back again.

The screw holes were messed up, so I decided to add some dowels to reinforce the wood, and then redrill new holes. I used my flush trim saw to cut the dowels flush.

I removed the frets. I used a chisel and my soldering iron to avoid wood spliting while I gently pulled out the frets.

I drilled some holes to a scrap wooden block in order to add the removed frets. This way I would

remember the position of each fret.

Then I scraped some old paint from the fretboard using a blade from an exact knife as a scraper.

I used a hair dryer to heat the pick guard and remove it easily.

I scraped off the old varnish from the guitar’s top using the same scraping method.

I tried to flatten the neck by clamping it against a straight surface for about a week.

I added back the frets by pressing them with two blocks of wood and a clamp. I also added super glue to their sides.

To level the frets, I made a custom sanding block using a long wooden piece, double sided tape and sandpaper.

I made new neck and bridge bones using my belt sander. For the neck I used a small saw and a file to make the string slots.

I added a drop of super glue to attach the neck hone.

I drew my artwork on the guitar’s top with a pencil and used my pyrographer to wood burn the design.

I finished the top with water based satin clear varnish. I applied 4 coats with sanding between them.

My guitar was now ready to roll. Still not perfect, but I can play it!