Well started messing with the Washburn

[M29]

Hello,
I got the Washburn acoustic in the mail the other day and it was pretty much the way it was described on ebay. Here are a few images.

Will have to pick up a bridge. Don't know about the , it may be in the finish as I do not feel anything on the inside.

Don't have any idea what this person used for a pick, it may have been an old beer can tab or something, these are some scratches. I can sand them out and polish the guard to look new again.

The neck was what I was most concerned about as the seller said there was a good amount of fret ware. This is not bad at all, I was afraid I would have to replace them but they won't need a whole lot of work. The neck is good and straight, it actually had a little back bow without the strings on and I let the tension off the truss rod and it is straight as an arrow now so it is workable. It looks like there are deep grooves in the fret board but they are not bad at all mostly dirt.

Well more to come on this project. I am trying to locate a preamp and pickup at the moment.

M29

 

[Robert]

M29, I admire your eagerness. You will make a fine guitar come out of this, I know it.

 

[M29]

Hello Robert,

Thank you for the kind words, I am starting to get a bit too many projects going here and need to get to work on them One thing that is a drag on fixing up these guitars is waiting for the paint to dry. It seems like they set around for a long time before you cen set them in a stand or hanger.

Awesome avatar Robert. I miss the kids at that age, my boy is 17 and my daughter is 14. We are amazed at watching them grow up and we forget, or want to forget that we are growing right along with them

Thanks again Robert.

M29

 

[M29]

Hello,

Here is an image of a handy tool I made up for some scale modeling that I do as well.

I have already started sanding the first two fret areas on the board. I cut the end off of a toothbrush and glued a small square of styrene plastic that you can get at most hobby shops. I then bought some adhesive backed automotive sand paper that comes in disc shape and cut pieces of this to fit the small square on the toothbrush. The adhesive holds just enough to get the job done and when the sandpaper wears out I just peal it off and put a new piece on. I am using 180 grit here and will work up to 320 grit.

Ouch gotta tackle those frets next.

I hope this helps.

M29

 

[Spudman]

Now that is a great idea M29.

Maybe it could even be taken another direction: groove the sandpaper end of the toothbrush to be the same radius as you would like your fret crown - add super fine grit wet/dry sandpaper say 2500 - then sand away the damaged areas on the frets - finish polish with steel wool - frets crowned, polished and smooth. Bingo!

You could use something like 3M spray adhesive or contact cement to get sandpaper that is not adhesive backed to stick to the brush.

 

[M29]

Now that is a good idea Spudman! Yeah I like that, I will put one of them together and try it out.

Thank you very much.

M29

 

[Tinky-Winky]

Scale modelling eh? Would you care to expand?

 

[M29]

Hello Tinky-Winky,

Well...I used to build old Rat Fink, hot rods, sailing ships, tanks and plane models back in the 60's and about ten years ago I got back into building some of these again and got a lot of enjoyment out of it. I had a bad back surgery and a few more back surgeries a while back and modeling kind of fit in to my new lifestyle. A better portion of the current modelers today are old dudes like me that used to build them when we were kids. The models today are awesome with excellent detail not much like they used to be, they are a bit more of a challenge to build.

Do you build kits?

M29

 

[M29]

Hello,

Well I have a bit more done on the Washburn. I filed the frets to clean up the worn area near the first few frets from the nut. In order to get rid of these worn areas I had to file and lower all the frets ahead of them so there would not be any buzzing. I had plenty of fret to work with and they are all nice and even with flat tops that need to be crowned. This is the next problem as I got rid of my crowning file about 15 years ago with the thoughts that I would never need that again. Now I am back playing and I need my file. I will have to give Spudman's tool idea a try. I read in one book that a guy used his hand with sandpaper and just run it the lenth of the fretboard to round off or crown the frets. I don't know if this will work very well but I may try it.
I also cleaned the fretboard between the frets. The board was really dark, which I assumed was dirt but after I messed with it a while I think someone may have darkened it with something. What ever it was I scraped and sanded it back to the original wood, which may be rosewood but looks like it may be something else.
Here is an image of the frets and the fret board. I see I spelled (crowned) wrong in the picture

The next image shows the shallow crack that I repaired with super glue. I don't know if this will reoccur or not, time will tell. I may try to find a small piece of spuce and glue it underneath to bridge the crack but from what I can tell the crack does not go all the way through.
I also glued a new rosewood bridge from Stew-Mac on with Tightbond wood glue. Since this image I have sealed the bare wood areas with lacquer sanding sealer and painted this area with black lacquer.

I picked up some Grover 18 to 1 tuning keys and now it is time to put on the clear finish.

I hope this is helpfull.

M29

 

[kerc]

Awesome work, man! Keep it going, and keep us posted...Usually you see this kind of stuff done on solidbodies, it's nice to see it done on an acoustic.

You're a scale modeler too, eh? What do you build? I'm into cars...