I acquired this guitar from my pastor at church and put it into the someday pile. That day has arrived.

My brother, Daren, plays in the worship band at his church and while talking to him one day, I mentioned this guitar. He told me that he would love to have a 'Dan Savage' guitar and that the super-shallow bowl appealed to him for a stage guitar.

He's visitiing for the holidays, so as a fun project, we decided to pull the tops off this guitar and the 1612-4, which is also my next project, which will be re-topped in tandem with this one.

Here's what the guitar looked like when I got it. To put it bluntly, it was worn out. The top was sunken, the bridge had been shaved, as had even the saddle. So, the plan was to pull the neck, then pull the top.

This guitar will be getting a torrefied Adi spruce top and braces. Since most of this work is stuff you've alread seen before, I'm only going to post highlights of stuff I'm doing that I haven't done before.

I'm going to try a couple of new things on this guitar. I'm going to try to add abalone purfling to the body a la the Custom Legend. It'll be getting a walnut carved CL bridge.

I'm also going to try making my own real abalone CL rosette. When it's done it'll be more like a Custom Ultra. Here's a couple of pics that shows how these are built.

Neck is off.

As is the top.

The neck uses a dovetail joint. Rather than convert this to a bolt-on neck, we'll be leaving this as a glue-on neck. I'll clean up the neck and body block, shim it out to where it needs to be, then glue it back on once the guitar top is finished.

So, I got an unfinished rosette from the MS to use for my own Custom Legend-style rosette.

I ordered some shell feathers from the Duke of Pearl. These are shavings of shell that are ~.005" thick. Each feather is about 1-1/4" x 5". I ordered several different varieties because I didn't know which would look best.

The top row is green abalone and the bottom row is red abalone.

Here's some mother of pearl feathers.

And a red abalone laminated sheet.

Here's a close-up of the green abalone showing the rippling in the figuring. These are really pretty, but the red abalone will look best.

Here's a close-up showing figuring of the red abalone.

And, how it'll look when behind the rosette.

Since Daren is only going to be here for a few more days I thought I'd let him pick out and cut the red abalone pieces for his rosette. Once they're cut and numbered I'll glue them into the rosette later on.

I used the above pics from TJR to create a template in CAD for the sections of abalone used in the rosette. This printed version on the right was used to verify the finished size.

The pieces on the left are various attempts to cut the shell feathers. The shell is very thin, about .004", so it's very delicate. Cutting with scissors is unpredictable. Cutting with an Xacto blade is also unpredictable because of how hard and brittle the shell is. The closest thing to success was to score the outline with a sharp Xacto, then breaking it along the score like thin glass. This worked, but was tedious and time-consuming. Even then, the shell was delicate and breaks easy.

Here's the template printed onto a transparency. The tracing template will be placed over the shell to find the exact orientation of the shell as it's placed around the rosette.

Here's the tracing template.

Here's the solution for cutting out the sections of shell. We stuck clear shipping tape to the back of the shell before tracing and cutting. Now the pieces can be cut with scissors and don't split or crack. We'll just leave the tape on the back of the shell permanently.

Here's how they'll look in place.

Yay, I can post here, now! Thanks Damon!

As Dan wrote, before I left for home, we worked on the rosette pieces based on what I thought would look good. It didn't. It ended up looking more like mother of pearl than abalone. We decided the the green abalone will look better than the red abalone.

In honor of the randomness of the universe and MS, Dan's going to cut the new pieces for the rosette based on space considerations rather than artistic interpretation.

Daren

Here's the pics of the rosette pieces. Below is the patterns from the template for the rosette sections traced onto the red ab.

And the first few pieces. Unfortunately, we chose to trace the pattern onto the front side of the shell using a Sharpee permanent marker. This caused two problems. First, it caused a build-up of ink on the underside of the template that caused the template to stick to the shell. It also bled under the template something fierce. It was also a pain to clean off the shell and on most parts it left a shadow of the ink. Cleaning off the ink made the task of cutting out the pieces long and laborious.

Here's what the final red ab pieces look like when in place. This is actually a mirror-image of what the finished rosette would look like.

Because of how thin the shell feathers are, these pieces are pretty translucent and pick up whatever color is behind them. The back of the rosette will get sprayed with flat black spray paint once the shell pieces are glued into place. This will darken them a little bit more than what the above photo shows.

We thought that the plain red ab looked too much like mother of pearl, so we decided to try the figured parts of the green ab, instead.

Here's the finished pieces of green ab sitting on the rosette. This is a mirror-image of how it will look. Again, once it's sprayed with black it will darken a little bit. It definitely doesn't look like MOP.

Instead of using a marker to trace the template, I used a mechanical pencil and that worked a lot better. It stayed on when being handled and the marks can be erased with the pencile eraser leaving no marks. But, the line is so thin that most of the time it gets cut away leaving no trace behind. This made the task of cutting out the pieces a lot easier and faster.

When we cut out the red ab pieces, we did so in a two-step process. The first step was to rough-cut all the pieces at once, then do a final fitting to the rosette. For the green ab pices I cut them to fit the rosette in one piece at a time instead of cutting out all the pieces. The accuracy of the thin pencil line vs. the thick, bleeding marker line is what made this possible.

"The factory used segments of real abalone first on the Custom Legend rosettes. Then, other guitars, such as the Collector Series got them. "

When Ovation was putting out thousands of guitars...was the process of cutting abalone done by a machine? What a tedious and meticulous process this would be. I can now see the argument for decals.

If they're sized correctly, and supplied to the factory in bulk, it wouldn't be that much trouble to assemble these rosettes in a production environment. Having to cut them by hand is the time-consuming part. Still, abalonoid is cheaper and easier than segments of abalone. Less breakage and waste, too.

I don't think they ever did the rosette with real MOP. I bought some when I ordered the abalone because I thought it would be interesting to see a real MOP rosette.

Daren

I spent some time cleaning up the body in preparation for joining the new top.

I cleaned the glue out of the dovetail mortise in the neck block. This was actually the first job I did. I used a heat gun to warm the glue, then an Xacto razor chisel to get under the glue to separate it from the underlying wood. In areas where it didn't matter, such as the shallow channel in the middle of the neck block, I just left the glue as it didn't hurt anything.

I also used the heat gun to soften the glue holding the remnants of the old top to the kerfed lining and top of the neck block. It was definitely a lot easier and faster to do this job with a heat gun rather than cold chiseling.

I removed all the old glue from the neck. I could have removed it from the sides of the dovetail, but the glue was filling a shallow groove, so I decided to just leave it in place rather than having to re-fill it again later on.

I still need to remove the glue remnants from the underside of the fret board extension.

Now that all the glue is removed I tested the fit of the neck to the body. Not bad.

It's fit is a little sloppy, but all in all it should work just fine. I'll fine-tune the fit as I go.

Wow! This guitar seems to be coming apart pretty cleanly. Definitely makes the retopping go easier. It's still a lot of work, but at least there's not more work on top of it. Pun intended.

I was able to joint the top in preparation for joining. I also rough cut all the brace stock.

I'm planning to join the tops for all four guitars at the same time so that I can take them down to the sanders and have them all thickness sanded together.

While each top is drying I'll be cutting out the braces.

Yep. It's just a molly, or more properly a rivet or jack nut.

https://www.mcmaster.com/#anchor-nuts/=16001lz

They come in a number of sizes, but I believe that Ovation uses the 6/32 thread size.

I worked the Joshua Bell concert tonight in Los Alamos. Here's a photo of him with his $5 million Stradivarius violin. He was nice enough to accommodate my request for a photo after his rehearsal.

He looked at me a little weird when I told him my bro rebuilt guitars and would love a photo of him with his Strad (Shhh! Don't tell Joshua I really just wanted a photo of his Strad).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell

Daren

Got the top rough cut. (first cutaway re-top) Sound hole is cut. All braces are made and being glued down. I'll pull the top off the gobar deck this afternoon, then work on the 1612 top.

Thanks.

The hats have the logo below. Daren is the director of the Atomic City Children's Theater in Los Alamos, NM. This year we all got ACCT hats for Christmas.

Top being glued to the bowl.

Yes, that's the 1117-4 top being glued at the same time. If I had more bench space I would have glued the other two tops at the same time.

Actually, pretty similar.

Both Paul's 1117 and your 1528 have Adirondack spruce tops. Yours is just a little darker.

What is different about these four guitars is how the tops sound when they're tapped.

Paul's 1117 is the most hollow sound, followed by the 1612. This isn't really surprising because they're both deep bowls with similar brace patterns. I attribute the difference to the Adi top and hand-laid bowl on the 1117, with the Sitka spruce top and SMC bowl on the 1612.

Next is the 1778T, followed by your 1518. Again, not surprising because the 1778T is a medium depth bowl and yours is a super-shallow bowl.

Don't get me wrong, they all will sound great. Just different from each other.

I worked the Baltimore Consort concert this evening. Ronn McFarlane was nice enough to share his lute with me (to look at and photograph, not play - more about Ronn's custom lute here - Ronn kept his lute in his hand the entire concert; even during breaks!). This lute is about a year old and was built by Travis Carey.

I told Ronn about my luthier bro, Dan and his plans to built a wooden back Ovation. I also talked to him about Dan using torrified wood, and explained the significance of what it is and why it's used.

I was surprised that the lute is actually sections of flat bent wood rather than a true round back.

More of the back.

All of the Baltimore Consort's string instruments had intricately carved sound holes. As is usually the case in life, I wish I had taken more photos of the other instruments.

The fretting was interesting. It was string that wrapped around the neck. As Ronn explained it, it allowed for minor adjustments in tuning, unlike a guitar with it's permanent frets. Rather than re-tie the string frets, when adjustments are made, they insert little pieces of toothpicks to maintain the necessary tension.

Speaking of torrefied wood guitars, I see now that Ibanez is offering a guitar that has, not only torrefied Adirondack spruce top with torrefied Adi X-braces, but also a torrefied East Indian rosewood (EIR) back, torrefied mahogany neck, torrefied EIR fretboard and torrefied EIR bridge.

IOW, it's the closest thing to a 300-year-old wood-box guitar that anyone can buy. I would imagine the sound is nothing short of spectacular. (or, close to how your Aspen AD-35 sounds - LOL!)

See: Ibanez AVD80

I don't think they're available in the USA yet, but the street price in Europe is €1,599 ($1696)

Wow, I repaired my first Steinway today. Or, more accurately, I repaired it yesterday (didn't take before photos), and let the glue dry until today.

We have a regular guy who services the Steinway before concerts. When he was in here for the Joshua Bell concert, he noticed that a piece of felt had come loose and was interfering with one of the lower E keys. He fixed it with Tite-Bond, but as it's a wood glue, it really needs 24 hours to cure. He only had a few hours before the concert.

Sometime after the concert, the glue joint failed and the felt again folded over to interfere with the key. I spoke to him and we identified the problem, and I fixed it.

I searched for something to use as a clamp to hold the felt in place. As it turns out, paint stirring sticks were the perfect width.

A close up of the wood clamping the felt in place. It also worked a mask to keep the glue from dripping on (or into) the keys. I used a narrow screw driver as a palate knife.

All fixed.

Steinway CD 341 is ready for action!

Routed the binding and purfling channels.

Got the abalone purfling glued into place and razor-planed down.

I've never done abalone purfling before, so this one took a deep breath and crossed fingers before diving in.

To make the job a little easier, I used Zipflex, which is avaiable through Stewmac. This is the same stuff used my several manufacturers, including Ovation. It's pretty pricey, but after doing the job, it's worth every penny, both from a visual and from an ease of use standpoint.

When I've done the BWB purfling and binding, I use two strips of purfling and the binding. Needless to say, applying the glue to three pieces, then holding them in place while applying the strips of masking tape is a task that requires a lot of concentration. This is because the acrylic glue (basically Duco cement) dries pretty quickly, so I can only work about 6" at a time to assure myself that I don't end up with dry glue joints.

The Zipflex is basically short strips of abalone inside a flexible plastic/vinyl channel. The normal binding glue doesn't grab onto it. The Zipflex folks recommend using CA to glue the purfling to the body. They also recommend using a sealer in the grooves so the CA doesn't wick into the wood and discolor it.

I did some tests on torrefied scrap and found that the CA doesn't permanently discolor the wood. I planned to use BW purfling on both sides of the Zipflex. The Zipflex folks suggest glueing one strip at a time starting with the inner, then gluing the Zipflex to the inner, then gluing the outer.

I found that gluing the inner and the Zipflex at the same time worked okay, so that's what I did. Once this was done, I went back and glued the outer BW purfling. The Zipflex is about half the height of the BW purfling, so I used a razor plane to bring the height of the BW purfling down to the thickness of the Zipflex. That's what you're seeing in the photo above.

I'll glue the binding on this afternoon after I clean any excess glue out of the binding groove. I got the binding/purfling on Paul's 1117 this morning before doing Daren's 1528.

Because of how well the CA used to glue the purfling on this guitar, I'm thinking of using CA to glue the BWB purfling on the 1612 and 1778 instead of the acrylic glue because I can work more slowly and don't have to worry about dealing with three strips at a once. Instead, I can glue the purfling into place, then go back and glue the binding.

I got the binding/purfling scraped down.

I sprayed the top with naptha, then put the bridge and rosette in place to get an idea of what the guitar will look like when it's done.

I've decided that trying to get four guitars done at once is a little too much work. So, I'm going to concentrate on getting this guitar and Paul's 1117 done, then go back and finish the 1612 and 1778.

Next job on this guitar is to get the bridge and top masked off in preparation for spraying the sealer/primer.

Cut out the top for the neck. Masking is started.

All masked up, first coat of polyurethane is on. Now, it's time to start building up the base coats in preparation for the final gloss coats.

I got the fingerboard leveled and the new frets installed.

I also got the final finish leveled and polished. I'll glue the bridge down tomorrow, then fit the neck to the bowl.

" I used this finishing system on Jay's #485 "

I am not sure how Dan could improve on finishing out a top. 485 has a beautiful top, that looks every bit of the guitars age, only in pristine condition. Dan got it perfect, right out of the gate. Thanks again!

Bridge is being glued.



After this is dry, I'll fit the neck, then glue the rosette.

I'll wait to glue the neck until the final clear coats are applied to it.

All done. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

For grins and giggles, I plugged my CU into my amp...and nothing but a humm. Luckily, my luthier was only a phone call away. Dan identified what he thought might be the problem.

I removed the amp system for testing and found a small problem.


Uh, that's not good. Unfortunately, while fixing one problem, it created two more problems.


But, as Dan says, this isn't rocket science, and I was able to solder the red into the + and the black wire into the - on the pre-amp board and I have a amplified guitar again. Yay!

It seems between the age of the guitar, and the cross country journey jarred the one power cable loose. Then when I ham-handed the repair of the one power cable, it broke loose the other two cables from the circuit board.

Happily, all is good and I learned a little more about Ovation luthiery. :D