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| This 1934 Martin 00-40H was discovered while an old house was being emptied of it's contents in preparation for refurbishing and resale. The guitar was in a closet along with 2 other 30s instruments as well. I acquired this guitar in May of this year with the aim of converting the guitar to Spanish style play. The guitar is completely original and crack free. The hawaiian style set up differs in several significant ways from Spanish style set up. The neck angle for hawaiian set up is much shallower (allowing for the strings to be high off the fretboard), the fretboard is dead flat along it's width (as opposed to slightly radiused) the frets are ground dead flat to the fretboard (serving as markers only as the strings don't touch the frets) and the saddle has no compensation (it is slotted straight across, no slant. In addition, the nut is very high in order to facilitate slide play. Conversion involves addressing each of these issues to make the guitar suitable for Spanish style play. | 
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| The frets are now removed and it's time to radius the fretboard. For this I simply used a radius block with 100 grit sand paper attached to the surface with double stick tape. Working carefully the fretboard was radiused within about 30 mintues. Once the proper radius was established I resurfaced the board through successive finer grits right down to 320 for a smooth finish that gives a good patina to the board. Older Martins such as this one have thinner fretboards than modern guitars so it is critical when radiusing the board to only remove the amount of material necessary to achieve the desired radius. Going beyond that could result in several potential problems including sanding through the inlays and lessening the inherent stiffness of the neck. |
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| Next, the frets are leveled. Bar fretwire is quite tall when in it's raw form before being ground down. The fret slots, though not made overly shallow from the fretboard radius operation, left the frets standing quite quite tall after installation. I used a simple flat mill file with a fairly aggressive tooth to grind the frets quickly. After recrowning and polishing the neck is ready to reset and attach to the body. |
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| The re-routing of the saddle slot is done with the assistance of a jig that works with the Dremel Moto tool. The jig guides the moto tool once set to cut the proper compensation slant. Using a carbide tipped spiral 'down cut' bit and the jig the new saddle slot it routed to the proper compensation for spanish play. |
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The new saddle slot and bone saddle. |
| The nut, originally 1/2" high to facilitate hawaiian slide style play, now had to be taken down for the new set up. The same original ivory nut was shaved down to the proper height and reinstalled. |
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