Official Luthiers Forum!

I thought I just posted a response. I guess not. I'll try again.

Okay, you're making a player here, rather than a perfect restoration. With that in mind, I think you're making a pretty good save. I'm impressed at most of your improvising. You're working on an L-50. The inside back you found is an ES-150, which is not exactly the same style, but I agree the back is probably similar. I can't account for the "missing" brace at the waist, but I agree that it can't hurt to add one, as long as you are not restoring. If you haven't glued the back on yet, let me suggest you remove your light-colored brace and wait until you can get a piece of mahogany to match the color of the others. You might not think this is a big deal, but you will see what I mean every time you look into the f-holes.

Are you pre-sanding the angle into the tops of your new kerfed lining? If not, please pull those strips off and reglue them so their tops stand a little proud of the guitar's edge. If you don't, you're going to slightly reduce the height of your guitar sides as you sand the angle into the lining. Maybe not a huge deal for a "player", but this is an old Gibson and there are people here who will freak out about that. The reason: It's an irreversible alteration. (Everything else you propose to do is reversible.)

Good luck with the rest of it and keep us informed of the progress. I love old arch tops. I wish I had a vintage Gibson in my collection of arch tops.

Thanks for reading the thread and posting you comments.

I measured the angle the old kerfing and it was enough to raise a straightedge about one inch from the other side of the guitar. It may not show but the new kerfing is about 1/8" proud of the back. With that in mind the plan is to sand the kerfing with a 2x4 with a 1" spacer at the other end to recreate the same angle with the new kerfing. I'm going to re-use the existing rear binding, so, yes everything needs to line up just like it was before. The neck block and end block lost some wood so those need to be built back up to the correct angle also.

I wound up staining the new brace to match the others.

This is the repaired back with all the braces glued in place.

Working on the pickguard.

The back is re-stained to cover the repair areas.

More work on the pickguard.

Nice progress. The back looks good.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Good work so far!

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Binding the pickguard.

Ye-haw!
Looking great!

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Headstock cleaned. It is in good condition, no cracks. Trussrod nut works fine.

Starting to look like a guitar. But I need to build a jig to get the back on with about a degree of extra angle on the neck. My action with the saddle as low as it goes is 6/64 without the back in place. I don't want to take any wood off either the original saddle or bridge. They are small and look fragile. I'm surprised they are not cracked or sagged after all these years.

I shot some rattlecan nitro on the guitar's back to protect it during re-installation and it warped it and bent the braces backward. Probably was too cold that day to just run outside and shoot a coat of paint and then come back in.

To recover this situation I removed all the lacquer from the piece but it stayed warped. I then had to remove all the braces and re-glue them.

Finally, today, I got the back glued in place. Now wait a day. Not shown is the clamp across the lower bout. Those two clamps were the key to not having to make a mold. I was able to press the sides together as I applied the dowel clamps. When I got to the neck, I released the neck clamp and slipped the neck back ever so slightly, so as to get more neck angle without distorting the shape of the guitar.

Sorry about the setback with the back glue up. It would have been a great opportunity to make a replacement brace out of matching wood. But I guess it doesn't matter too much if the instrument is going to be your player.

The top got a few modifications prior to fitting the back.

I used this simple method to prepare the kerfing for back fitting. I sanded down until the sandpaper just touched the black mark.

Plays and sounds great.

https://youtu.be/f4tcIQXNC2E

Well done. It's a good feeling to bring an old, neglected guitar back to life!

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Outstanding job! Well done.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

That looks great. What is all that hardware mounted inside the pickup cavity?

I have to say I love your go bar deck too

Believe it, or not - that is the Charlie Christian pickup, weird magnet structure and all.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yes, those are the magnets for the pickup.
I used a reproduction pickup from http://www.ccpickups.co.uk.
Here is a picture of an original Gibson pickup. Even though it looks big, it is actually a smaller version of the pickup Gibson used in their first electrics. Their first electrics were lap steels. An ES-125 Lap Steel pickup is shown below.

To support the heavy pickup, they mounted it to the middle of the "X". I modeled my hybrid bracing off the ES-150.
(picture shows top of an original ES-150 with the mounting holes for the pickup)