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1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
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Author:  jfmckenna [ Tue Dec 01, 2015 9:42 am ]
Post subject:  1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I bought this guitar off of my local Craig's List a couple years back intending on fixing it up. Finally getting around to it. The top crack repair was poorly done. It looked like they just glued in some saw dust. I'm thinking of routing that out and inlaying a spruce sliver. There was a pick guard on it at one point as is evident by the finish damage but I'm not sure if that was original and if it was have no idea what it would have looked like. I really cannot find much info on these guitars but this one was probably on the high end of the companies line with all the inlay and BRW back and side with ebony fret board and bridge.

Here is the top and you can see the outline of the pick guard:

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Here is what it would look like with the guard on. I think it's a bit gaudy. Do you think that this was part of the original design or perhaps some one put it on later? IT would cover up half of the rosette.

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I'm also doing a neck reset on it. The heal turned out to be very brittle. I've never seen a break like this so easily. Steaming only took about 15 minutes but perhaps it caused a lot of damage. The crack is right along a grain line. The neck came out in one piece but after tugging on the heal to test what looked like finish cracks it broke right off. IT's possible by the look of it that it was repaired at some point in the past too.

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Also there was a nice conchoidal break on the dovetail and after all the water damage from steaming the pieces were never going to fit back together so I just notched it out and inlayed a piece of mahogany.

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In hind sight I wished I had sawn off the fret board extension as I had a hard time finding the pocket. I didn't because then I would have to deal with binding too but that ended up coming loose anyway, I found the pocket okay after drilling a second hole on an angle but I think it steamed a bit more then it should have and caused the damage to the heal.
Author:  Chris Pile [ Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Doing a good job so far.
Keep us in the loop on this interesting piece.
Author:  RusRob [ Tue Dec 01, 2015 2:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Nice Guitar and it should be a beauty when it is done.

As for the pick guard it is hard telling if it was original or not. I would make a guess and say it was put on after the fact but who knows without doing some research on that specific guitar.

This will be interesting to watch the progress.

Cheers,
Bob
Author:  cphanna [ Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I think it will be fascinating and VERY informative to watch your progress, so please post lots of photos as you go along. Also, please caption your photos with some detail so those of us who are not experienced in repairs can understand what you are doing...and why you are doing it.
Author:  dzsmith [ Sat Dec 05, 2015 6:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
cphanna wrote:
I think it will be fascinating and VERY informative to watch your progress, so please post lots of photos as you go along. Also, please caption your photos with some detail so those of us who are not experienced in repairs can understand what you are doing...and why you are doing it.

Me too!
Author:  Johny [ Sun Dec 06, 2015 9:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I'll be following along!
Author:  jfmckenna [ Mon Dec 07, 2015 9:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Ok moving along.

There was a crack 'repair' that looked like some one just filled in with sawdust and glue but the separation was way to big for that and it needed a splint. So I cleaned up the crack with a saw and needle files and prepared a splint out of red spruce. I don't know what the top wood is but it is very redish in color where the finish is removed under the old pick guard. I had some pinkish Sitka but some spare Adi pieces were more towards the color of the top. Of course one I sanded and scraped it flush it was much more white. Also the runout on the top of this guitar is pretty impressive. In light you can really see the difference between the two book matched halves so no matter what splint I put in it will never match the reflectivity.

Preparing the crack
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After scraping flush
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Matching color
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In hindsight what I found was that this top has already been refinished. In fact if you look at the first pic above you can see what looks like dust particles in the finish. So I tested the finish and it was not lacquer and after sanding up some dust it had that classic Poly smell so some one at some point refinished the top. With that already having been done I have decided to jsut go ahead and refinish the top for two reasons. 1) it's already been done and so the vintage value if it even had any is already ruined and 2) there is no way I would be able to get this guitar to play in tune as is. After measuring the scale length the bridge position was off by almost 2/10ths of an inch. The scale is 24.4 inches so measuring to the 12th fret from the nut is 12.2 inches. Measuring from the 12th to the saddle location as is was 12.1 inches, even shorter then the scale length. I've seen badly placed guitar bridges taht were set to exact scale length with no compensation many times before but even shorter? I don't know how this guitar could ever have played in tune, in fact there is no way it could.

It's possible that the neck had been reset in the past. It looks a lot like PVA glue in the neck joint which definitely would not have been original. Also if you look at the edge of the binding along the fretboard you can see evidence of sanding and scraping so my guess is that who ever reset the neck in the past removed the fret board, reset the neck, and then reglued the fretbaord in the wrong place. Because I can't imagine a guitar company would have made such a drastic mistake in bridge placement, further I can't imagine anyone trying this guitar out in a music store buying it because it would sound horrible. That and the evidence that the neck was restet and fret board removed, that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

So now I am deciding whether to just fill the pin holes and replace the bridge or pulling the fretboard and re-positioning it.
Author:  RusRob [ Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Nice job on splicing the crack. I have done a couple of those and it can be a bit nerve racking making that first cut!

On your dilemma about the fret board. I would say it all depends on how you are planning on restoring this guitar. If you move the bridge you will probably have to make the new one a bit oversized to cover footprint of the old one. Even if you decide to refinish the top you will still have the tan lines of the old one so that may be the deciding factor whether to pull the fretboard. Plus you will want to take into account the time and effort it will take and hope you can remove the fretboard without breaking it.

Tough decisions but I am sure it will come out very nicely either way you choose.

I'll be watching.

Cheers,
Bob
Author:  jfmckenna [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Double Post...
Author:  jfmckenna [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Had a bit more time to get back to this project. I decided to go ahead and refinish the top since it had been refinished anyway with what appeared to be just regular polyurethane and was not a very good job of it and the fact that it had some big ugly pick guard glued to it and the bridge was in the wrong position justified a refinish imho. The bridge was off by a whole .1in. THe saddle slot was also straight like on a classical guitar.

Was it typical for guitars in this era to have poorly placed bridges? It was not compensated at all, the saddle position was actually just shy of the total scale length. There is no way this guitar could ever had played in tune. The neck was definitely reset before and one thing I noticed was that the tail of the neck was actually flush with the back face of the socket. I found this out as I reset the angle of the neck by chiseling away the shoulders and then was scratching my head as to why in the world it was fitting with such a huge gap. Reason was that the tail face was pushing on the back socket face. Usually there is a signifigant gap there, in fact I've never seen one that was flush like that, probably one of the reasons why I had such a hard time steaming off the neck. Anyway so I had to remove some of the tail face to make it fit right. I'm guessing that the initial neck reset may have not been done properly and that the body joint actually moved a little bit closer to the bridge shortening the scale length, that's my only guess as to why it was like that.

Fitting the shoulders of the joint to the sides by flossing with 220 paper
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Till it gets a nice flush fit
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I have a big roll of mahogany edge 'tape' that makes great shims for a variety of things. Here I shim the dovetail so that the joint fits tight with jsut a little bit of pressure. Once clamped it lockes into place. I glue the neck and shims in all at once.
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Here is how I filled the bridge pin holes. I use catalyst in the hole and on the dowel, insert it then zap it with thin CA.
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Then I flush cut with a pull saw
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Then sand everything flush
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Author:  Chris Pile [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Looking good so far. If it was me, since you are basically rebuilding the instrument - I'd go ahead and move the fingerboard.... But since you've filled the old pin holes, maybe that's a moot point. At any rate, when you've completed this I expect you'll have a really nice old guitar.
Author:  david farmer [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Have you checked fret placements on the fingerboard? It wouldn't surprise me if they are all over the place. It might help with deciding what compromises need to be made. especially since you have decided to make it play right. After all the work you put in, it would be a bummer to discover the intonation is good at the twelfth, but poor in other places. Cool project.
Author:  jfmckenna [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Good suggestions, thank you.

The fretboard removal option is still on the table. Filling the holes would allow me to get everything right anyway. I have to make a new bridge and could even adjust the hole spacing as the other spacing seemed a bit too close.

I just measured the frets and they certainly are not great. I would not accept those measurements if it was my own guitar that I was building but they were not too terrible either. There was no systematic error in the spacing. Some were spot on and others were off considerably but most were close. The 12th fret is at 12.2in so the scale should be 24.4 and the center of the saddle was at 23.95 or so.

The guitar baffles me because it was made of nice materials, BRW/Ebony/Mahogany and has ornate inlay so I would think that it was made as one of the high end models in the S.S. Stewart line but I'll be darned if I can find any info or any other guitars like it on it online.
Author:  david farmer [ Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
You could try inquiring at the banjo hangout forum. I think Stewart was mainly a banjo company so they might have some searchable threads.
Author:  jfmckenna [ Thu Dec 31, 2015 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I have indeed checked on some banjo forums and I've been able to find some examples. The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum also had a few posts about SS Stewarts as it's known that Martin made some guitars for the brand. I guess it was one of those brands that was just a name that outsourced the work. I hear even Gibson made some. Interesting thing about this guitar is the plastic binding has the classic gibson nibs on it so I have no idea if that is any indication or not.

But anyway. I'm on the fence about whether to remove the fretboard or not. Leaning toward removing it though.

After some light sanding the scored line on the top is still very visible. I don't want to sand past that because it will remove way too much off the top.

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Here is the approximate location of the bridge, it's a full 3/10th of an inch off. I'm not sure I want to make a bridge that wide to cover it up. If it was a large guitar then maybe but it would stick out like a soar thumb on this little parlor.

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So I have two choices. Move the fretboard back, there is plenty of room for that. There was a wide nut in there in the first place so moving it back all the way to the face plate and cutting a new nut channel would work. Or just glue it in place and deal with the scored line. After all there is a splint right behind it that is certain to show anyway. I can use some vintage amber shellac and it may hide it to some extent.

Open to suggestions.
Author:  SteveSmith [ Thu Dec 31, 2015 12:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
0.3" seems to me like a lot to add to the nut end of the fretboard. Since the line will be under the strings I would probably lean towards setting the bridge correctly and then trying to deal with the scored line cosmetically.
Author:  jfmckenna [ Thu Dec 31, 2015 1:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
SteveSmith wrote:
0.3" seems to me like a lot to add to the nut end of the fretboard. Since the line will be under the strings I would probably lean towards setting the bridge correctly and then trying to deal with the scored line cosmetically.


It is indeed a lot. I don't have a pic of it but if I do slide the FB the former nut was almost exactly .3in so it would be flush and then there is room to cut another nut slot, could do a thin one. Option two would be a compromise, slide the fretboard plus make a slightly bigger bridge. Also if you look at the 12th fret body joint, the 12th fret itself is considerbly past the body joint towards the bridge. Another oddity is that the bottom of the nut slot actually has splintered ebony in it. I suppose they could have had something like a zero fret originally and routed out the end of the board for the nut channel but still all these hints make me wonder if the fretboard was at one point removed to reset the neck (which was definitely done before given the fact that PVA glue was used in the joint) and then improperly placed. Because like I alluded to before, this was not a cheapo guitar and if it was originally build like that then there is no way possible it would have ever played in tune.

So I don't know. I'll take better pics to illustrate my point.

There is plenty of room under the bridge plate for the pin holes if I do choose to just reset the bridge and I suppose it would be a lot easier too.

Thinking out loud now, I could always try refinishing the top and hiding the line as best as I can before doing anything and if I don't like it then I can move the fretboard.
Author:  jfmckenna [ Thu Jan 07, 2016 10:37 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I decided to just go ahead and remove the fretboard. It just seemed like the best choice in this particular situation. I still can't quite figure out why the scale length was so far off but it's clear that the neck has been reset in the past and it's very likely that the FB was removed at one point too because it looks like there had been some scraping and refinishing done along the FB binding which would indicate a replaced FB (and not such a great repair job doing it).

So my best guess is that when they reset the neck they removed the FB to get to the dove tail and that they may have even over set the neck and then in trying to fix that shortened the scale length. The clues there are that the face of the tail was flush against the mortise, even glued to it. And then on top of that they probably placed the fretboard down wrong and instead of dealing with the error just left the bridge in place way to short.

But anyway.

This is the spacing of the old nut which is exactly the distance off in scale lenght + compensation. So the fret board will be moved flush with the face plate
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I use a regular cloths iron to remove the fretboard.
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Fretboard removed
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Here you can see how loose the dovetail joint is. It requires a good amount of shims to get it tight. This leads me to believe that perhaps the scale length was shortened when doing the first neck reset on this guitar some time back when ever it was done. Since there were not steam holes drilled into the 13th fret and the fretboard was not sawn through some where near the body joint I also believe that the FB was removed to rested the neck and then improperly placed leading to such a bad scale length error. Also in this image note the damage to the top under the FB extension which was probably done with a knife when removing the FB in the past.
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And here is the fretboard in it's proper place. I'll cut a thin nut for it
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Author:  jfmckenna [ Mon Jan 11, 2016 9:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Moving along. The guitar was missing a back brace. Fortunately it was the one right under the sound hole and easily accessible. I took some 80 grit paper and a small piece of plywood the same width as the back over the brace (and first bandsawing an estimated arch into it) and using the back arch of the guitar itself sanded an arch template out. Then I used that to draw a line on a spruce brace and then using a block plane arch the brace till it was close enough.

First I had to scrape off the old brace remnants. There was some weird filler crap they must have put in place at some point but it scraped and sanded away easily.
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Measure the other brace to match it for height and width
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And get it's thickness just right
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Then shape the brace after arching it
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I built a clamping caul to distribute pressure at the ends and the middle so I could use one clamp that would press on blocks through the sound hole
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I also had an brace arching jig for my Selmer guitars which just so happened to be the same exact arch as the back so I lined that with cork to use as a caul on the back side. Then just clamped everything up through the sound hole
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THe finished brace. I forgot to 'age' it before gluing it in even though it was my plan... Don't rush thing folks, as you know ::Rolleyes:: So I'll just reach in there and get to it with some vintage amber to tone it up a bit to look like the other old and yellowy braces
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And then finally glued in the reset neck. Bridge will come next after a few stiffening sessions of the French Polished top.
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Author:  Chris Pile [ Mon Jan 11, 2016 9:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Looking good.
Author:  jfmckenna [ Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Finally finished the project. Only thing left to do was to glue the bridge on and string her up. I did FP shellac on the top as the whole guitar was originally done in shellac too. I didn't really like how nice and new and shiny the top was so I tried an experiment. I haphazardly sanded with various grits of very fine mesh paper from 600 on up to 1800 and then polishing papers. I followed that with a fine polishing compound. I like the way it came out. It looks old now. The randomness gives it just the right look and in fact looks more like the back and sides do.

I used the old bridge as a model for the new one. I'm not so sure that the old bridge was original or not. It had two large pearl dots on the wings which I was not so sure I liked but it turns out I do like it a lot.

Scraping off the finish under the bridge foot print
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Clamping the bridge down. I used fish glue
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And some finished pictures
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I stung up with a set of D'Addario EXP 12's. THis guitar may have not seen string tension in 30 years. I really don't know. I just know it was in no condition to have strings on when I bought her off of Craigs List a couple years back. The seller said that it had been in his family and he inherited it but as far as he knew was kept in a closet for many many years. So it really was almost like stringing up a new guitar. My first impression was just like that, sort of that dull new sound. But after a few hours she started to warm up and now going on 2 days the sound is really opening up just like a new guitar would. It's got that ladder braced sound, loud and punchy but not a lot of over tones. I think I will hear some changes in this guitar to come.
Author:  Chris Pile [ Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
You, sir - are an awesome possum!
Author:  gxs [ Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
Fantastic job, that is a real blinged-out beauty.
Author:  Shaw [ Fri Jan 22, 2016 2:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
I would go with an extra light gauge on this. D'addario has as extra light gauge that sound quite good. A lot of these old guitars used gut strings. Martin built some guitars for them. Don't let the pinned bridge fool you.

Sent from my HTC Desire 626s using Tapatalk
Author:  jfmckenna [ Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: 1920's S.S. Stewart Restoration
She is a blinged out beauty isn't she!

I had put 10's on at first but it just sounded like it could not drive the top enough. Only other strings I had were 12's. But yes I had given this some thought too. It is a ladder braced top, or I guess a hybrid ladder where the upper tone bar just below the sound hole is on a slant. What I did was tune down a half step so now it's even got more of that old time blues sound. The guitar has opened up tremendously in the last week so I could probably try the tens again and maybe even settle on 11's. I was planning on fixing this up to sell but I think I've fallen in love with her so for now anyway it's a keeper. I think dropped tuning will be ok.
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