OK, I'm relatively new to the forum and didn't see any "repair" catagories so I thought I'd post this here.
Guy brought me this around Christmas wanting to know if I could fix it. He'd been to two other people - one wanted mucho money and the other one wouldn't even touch it. I told him I'd do what I could and took it home. It's a Martin ukelele from somewhere between 1930 and 1950 (no serial numbers)...........
I don't know if any of you remember the old "el Kabong" cartoons, but this thing looked like it had been used in the filming. Upon further investigation, I discovered that one back brace was loose (about half-glued) and the other one was loose and badly cracked......
I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I might be able to fit two fingers in the soundhole, if I was lucky, so how the heck was I going to fix this thing?? Finally decided that the back had to come off....much as I didn't want to hurt the original finish. But I figured, what the hey?, this thing is pretty much fubared anyway. I figured it was original assembled with hide glue, so I shot some steam to the seam to get it started. Once I got it started, the back came off relatively easy with minimal damage.......other than what was there already!!!
I did my best to remove the old glue from previous repair attempts (elmers? epoxy? who knows?).....
cleated the worst of the side cracks......
and aligned, glued, sanded, filled, sanded, filled, sanded, etc. the "el Kabong" damage....
That done, I reassembled the back, stained, sanded, stained some more, sanded lightly, and then put a few coats of lacquer on.....
Strung it up and played it. Owner's going to pick it up Tuesday. Hope he's happy! I think I may have made about $1.17/hr. on this but I consider the learning experience invaluable!!!
Made it worth while. I told him he got a deal and he was gracious enough to tell me that he KNEW he did. Great learning experience. My advice to others is, think it out for how ever long it takes, don't be scared, just take the plunge!! Once I got going on it, I realized that, hey, maybe I DO know what I'm doing!! Thanks all for the replies.....helped my confidence greatly.