Binding repair. Maton CW80.

This Maton CW 80 suffered badly from perished binding.
this guitar was new in 2017.
to their credit Maton acknowledged a fault with a batch
of binding installed on their guitars at this time. they kindly
agreed to supply me with new replacement binding.

The owner,Gary (left), was keen to learn about the
re-binding process so I invited him into my workshop to
work with me to complete the job. 

We removed all the perished binding. We waxed all the
surfaces in preparation for the gluing of the new binding.
This was to prevent contaminating the original finish with
super glue.

The re-binding process begins, carefully wrapping the binding
around the original routed steps in the body and wicking
super glue into the binding layers as we applied pressure
during the curing process.

The binding re-attached

we de-waxed all the surfaces then french polished the
entire guitar with several layers of shellac.

The finished result was excellent, one very happy customer
who also learned a great deal about his guitar along the way.

 

1961 Levin dreadnought acoustic guitar restoration.

I started taking photos of this guitar partway through my
restoration. Sadly the damage done to this guitar was extensive.
the Maple back was cracked in 7 places. repairs had been 
carried out by a violin repairer who took a very violin
repair approach to repairing this guitar. the broken back was
prized off cold causing significant damage to back and sides,

I stripped of most of the finish from the back and sides then
then set about stabilising the cracks, cleating them as went.

I noticed that, during the removal of the back the original
binding had been sacrificed. I masked the area with
striping tape the finished the sunburst finish using shellac
as a sealer.

There were so many fractured areas to stabilise.

Mercifully the top was in near new condition.

The base coat three colour sunburst is applied.

Because I did not want to risk further structural damage
I chose to paint the rear binding in and ivory coloured lacquer

With the clear coat applied the guitar looks like a well
cared for survivor. What an incredible guitar this turned out
to be! 

The renewed integrity of this guitar has resulted in a bell
like sustain.

There was some electrical work to be carried out on the Fishman
sound-hole control. The volume gradient was more like a switch
than a gentle curve. a resistor and capacitor were added to
improve the gradient.