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I bought an old Stella guitar (1920's vintage) on e-Bay some years ago and have been working up the courage to make her playable again. What follows isn't a tutorial, because I don't have the experience for that -- it's more of a travelogue back though a 90 year old guitar that had more than one surprise in store for me. Stella needed some attention; a neck reset, complete re-fret, additional bracing under the top in the upper bout, crack stabilization, a new nut and a setup. A fair amount of work on a guitar that set me back about $250 when I bought her. So, here we go--

Stella unstrung with the removable wire bridge location marked with low stick drafting tape:




Steaming the neck off in the kitchen. If my wife didn't play guitars, I don't think that she would let me do stuff like this!



I'm now ready to be presented with my first surprise! Prior to setting up the pressure cooker, I used an old iron and some artist palette knives to separate the base of the fretboard from the body. It seemed a little too easy compared to the old Yammies that I have dissected.
The neck joint came free with steam and when I popped the neck off, the bottom portion of the fretboard fell on the floor!



Time for a post -- this continues!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Very cool Jim!
Keep us posted as you move along!

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Well, upon getting the guitar back to the shop, I looked things over and discovered old dirt and some funky chunks of what might be old hide glue in the joint that I was sure that I tore open. I also found thick Popsicle stick shims inside the dovetail (more pics on the neck reset -- Stage Two). So while the dovetail joint dries I move onto the added bracing. When Stella was tuned to concert pitch, the upper bouts had a fair wrinkle in them. David Collins pointed this out when I brought the guitar to a OLF get-together a few months ago. I milled some adi bracing stock on the bandsaw and then moved to hand tools to create the braces:





The results are the two little braces shown mirror reversed in the following pic. I also made a tool to place the braces with some maple scrap and the end of a straight pin. I could stick the brace on the pin, apply glue (No guts for HHG -- used TiteBond for this), place the brace and pick it up with a clamp.



Tool in use:



Brace clamped:



Braces installed!



more to come....

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Jim for not doing a tutoral, your doing a pretty good job of one. Thanks. Does it look like the top was ever replaced or something else done around the fb before if you know that is? I have seen and learned by watching and then did a repair to top and cut the fb at the 14th fret and removed only that part of fb and left neck on as it/they didn't need a neck set. Just wondering and why the board came apart. Or if this is something done in older early guitars of this make in construction. Never seen it in an original build so agan just wondering. I know dumb qusetion, but hell I don't know so thought would ask

OK, third and last installment of Stage One. The Stella went out the door of some dry goods department store for the princely sum of $5.95 in the mid-20's and suffered some serious use in its day. There had been crack repairs done as well as cracked/broken bracing at some time in the past. The repairs look to be fairly old and done with hide glue:



There were two newer, open cracks in the back on the lower bout. I hydrated Stella in her case to close them as much as possible and then worked in thinned TiteBond. I just love these old ladder braced 'decalomania' guitars. Neill Harpe's http://www.stellaguitars.com is a fun and informative site with sound clips of the current inventory. Highly recommended for fans of these old boxes. I need to put a couple of cleats back there, but I'll need to talk my wife into this part as my arms are too big to make the reach!



Since there is no truss rod for fine tuning, I decided to replace the frets with the neck off of the guitar. The old frets were tee-frets, but the exposed portion were shaped like bar frets. The old frets only had 0.20" to 0.24" of remaining height. I decided to replace then with Stew Mac Medium - Meduim Highs.



The fret board was flat with zero radius. It is also made of some unspecified hardwood, probably birch, that was dyed. Next surprise -- it is also the most brittle piece of wood that I have ever touched! I used every trick in my little book to get the old frets out with out chipping, but to no avail.

I moistened the fretboard, then heated each fret with a Weller soldering gun before oh, so gently removing with ground down end cutters. Pieces of wood jumped off the fretboard like I had put popping corn in a hot buttered pan. I CA'd those that I could find and then ran a bead of thin CA down each fret slot. I filed flat and then releaved each slot with a triangular file. The new frets were installed with a hammer and the neck over a 25# bag of birdshot:



This has been a great learning adventure to this point. Stage Two will be resetting the neck, making a new nut and setting her up to play. Thanks for sticking around!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

I would be tempted to replace the fretboard on that one.

Stan--

The guitar definitely had a neck reset in its past history, but it doesn't look like the top has been replaced. The kerfs in the neck are all cut to within about 1/32" of going all the way through the board. My hunch is that when the original reset work was done, the neck was removed with heat rather than steam as there was no sign of another hole being drilled into the joint. I suspect that the fretboard was removed in a very heavy-handed manner at this time.

Barry--

If I were doing this for anyone else but me, I'd be recommending a new fretboard also! My attempt is to put this back into playable shape for occasional personal use. My goal is to keep this one as original as possible, warts and all. I've taken the lines from it and will be building a player from mahogany with an adi top. It will be ladder braced, but have the niceties of a real fretboard and a truss rod. Gotta get a line on those decals somehow!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Looking good so far Jim!

Is this the stella that you sent me the tracing of ?

Any way you could post a close-up pic of the bind/purfling scheme ?

Thanks again for the tracing, this one is going to be a sweet one to build!!!

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I think not so long ago it was standard practice to cut throught the fingerboard at the fret that meets the body , to facilitate a neck reset. Jody

Dave--

This is the guitar that the lines were taken from. The purfling is the same two-tone rope as the rosette. I'm pretty sure that you can get it from Gurian or Karin Rost. The binding is white plastic that has yellowed a great deal with age. I'll post a couple of close-ups later.

Jody--

At some point in the past, cutting the neck at the body join was apparently done as a matter of course. If I had been more experienced before starting this, I may have seen from a closer inspection of the top through the sound hole that something might be awry. Experience is just one of those things that you get about six minutes after you really need it! This is a fun project!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Jim,

I'm so glad that your sharing this with us. I remember spending quite a bit of time going over Ole Stella here and my Gibson L2 at the gathering. Many thanks again to David for his help that day. I wish we had more threads on repairs like this. Lately I've been too busy with house renovations and other mundane chores to hardly do any luthery type stuff . I hope that soon I can post the repairs to my Gibson. In the meantime, keep it coming, I'll be watching.

Cheers.

Dang, guess I got logged off. That was me above.

By the way, that's going to be a sweet little guitar when you get done.

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Horton, MI

Dave--

Here are a couple of shots of the purfling and the rosette. The purfling is 3/8" tall.






Kirt--

It is a lot of fun and also a bit of head scratching to get these old guitars playable again. Hope to have it finished within a week and I'll post Stage Two with the final stuff. As a big hint to anyone else doing repairs and restorations, I too would love to see more threads in these areas. I feel like my learning has barely scratched the surface.

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Thanks again Jim!!

Man, I love that old-timey looking purfling.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

This looks like a very fun project and you are doing a great job Mr. Howell.

Thanks Homeless!

Hopefully you will become the Newlyhousedguitarbuilder before too long!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC