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I tried logging in over at the UMGF thinking that would be the place for this question but dang if I simply can not log into that site anymore

Anyway I know some vintage restoration guys are still here, calling Frank Ford, John Arnold etc... anyway. I got this old one in for a restoration and I have not seen a bracing pattern like this in any of the literature and am trying to figure out if it was modified at some point. The client wants it to go back to all original if possible. There is a cross grain crack near the tail block that someone repaired with a gigantic block of some wood but it's also possible that they added this diagonal brace too.

The center brace was also cracked and caused a dip in front of the bridge to the sound hole.

Anyway here are some pics. If you just put together these two pics you can see the whole bracing. The guitar is so old that I cannot take a pic with a bright light source inside to 'ghost' the bracing. The spruce is like torrified wood that is opaque to light.





Regards.

It's possible it is original. Early Martin guitars used a number of different patterns, and some early guitar makers used X bracing, although we credit Martin with the innovation.

http://www.vintagemartin.com/xbraces.html

Looks original to me too. Not the trapazoid block though.
Going inside these old ones is like taking a ride on a time machine. I did a restoration on a 1880's one last year, I had known the owner since 40 years past, and she played it as her only guitar for that long.

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It does look original. If someone installed that cross brace my guess is they would have had to have the back off and I cannot find any indication that was done. But I've scoured my books and the vintagemartin website and online in general and can not find a pattern like this one. I should probably take better pics and send it to vintagemartin. It's the 3 blade Spanish style fan but with that one cross strut.

Perhaps some of the factor luthiers back then were given some room to experiment on their own.

Old spruce does become opaque. The hemicellulose 'filler' in thr lignin 'glue' that holds the wood together breaks down over time, and leaves voids. These act like the air spaces between transparent snow flakes, reflecting light and making it opaque. Torrefaction is supposed to break down the hemicellulose and render the wood more stable, since that's the part that absorbs water from the air.

That bracing is not all that much different from the 1845 Martin and Coupa shown on p. 235 of Evans and Evans' book "Guitars". Yours has an added diagonal 'cutoff' at the bottom of the fan, but that's about it.

Yup I have that book too but still have not seen one with that diagonal.

When I first started working with torrified wood that was the one thing I noticed about it which sort of favors their claim that the torrifaction 'ages' the wood, that it's totally opaque. Pretty cool.

It is possible that the guitar is pre-civil war (1840's?) and made when Martin was still experimenting with his bracing scheme. He may have tried a few that haven't yet been seen or published.