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This 1969 Martin D-45, one of
the last brazilian rosewood D-45s from regular production, was
bought by Kovacik Guitars in October of 2004 from it's original
owner. The previous owner had played the guitar consistantly for
about 20 years, using the guitar for bar and club gigs. Sometime
in the late 80s he became disabled and no longer able to play
guitar, so it sat under his bed for most of the last 15 years.
When the guitar was offered on ebay, Kovacik Guitars purchased the
guitar for repair and resale.
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: When the
guitar arrived there were many issues that needed to be addressed
before presenting the guitar for sale. The guitar had a small
section of fretboard binding missing, heavy fret wear and the finish
behind the 'cowboy chord' area of the neck (first position) was worn
through to the wood. In addition, the guitar had a 13" crack in the
lower bout of the treble side . |
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The crack was very clean with no
wood loss or splintering, and very little finish loss along the
seam. The original bridge was cracked straight through it's width. |
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The worst of the issues with the
guitar though was that there was considerable top wear beneath the
shadow of the original pickguard and at the treble wing of the
bridge. At some point the previous owner had also attached an
oversized 'cowboy' pickguard to prevent further top damage. That
pickguard (as well as the original) was long gone, revealing the
heavy top wear. Furthermore, there was an opaque glue of some sort
stuck to the area where the wear was heaviest, and there appeared to
be some sort of black ink or paint suspended in that glue. The
result was a top that was a terrible mess and could threaten to
severely degrade the value of the guitar. |
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TOP REPAIRS: The mess that was
made on this top caused quite a bit of anxiety regarding the
possible outcomes. When I began the process of removing the gluey
mess it appeared that the black ink or paint was in suspention in
the glue. If that was the case, the prognosis for clean up was
good. If the black spots were on the top of the bare wood in the
worn area, I was in for trouble. The hope here was that I could
clean up the top goop and seal the washboarded areas, allowing me
to restor a proper pickguard to the top and leave the strum wear
exposed.
The glue that was on the top
seemed to soften slightly when exposed just to the heat of my
hands on the surface. It appeared very likely that it was white
glue of some kind. With the use of a hairdryer to heat the area
slightly , I found that the glue bond with the top loosened very
easily.
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SIDE CRACK: Given that the side
crack was straight and clean with no splintering or wood loss this
repair was rather simple. As I've demonstrated in other repair
articles for this website, the crack was first dry clamped in the
proper alignment . |
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Once the clamping pressure was
holding the crack closed and level along it's entire length, the
crack was glued with cyano-acrylic glue applied in very small
amounts with a micro-fine pipette |
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The water thin glue flows with
wicking-action into the closed crack. Caution must be used so that
the glue does not bead up on the surface, as it will eat the
surrounding finish and will dry in a hard bead that then has to be
sanded flush. Once the entire crack is glued closed I used an
aggressive lacquer solvent to soften the seam edges of the lacquer
along the crack. The solvent was applied with an artist's brush
rather sparingly, the goal being softening the surface lacquer along
the edge to provide a good bond for new lacquer to be applied to the
seam. New lacquer was then applied, sparingly, in successive coats
with an artist's brush over top of the crack seam. After several
applications and adequate curing time, the seam was lightly sanded
with 400 grit paper, and the lacquer application process repeated.
This method was repeated until the crack seam was blended with the
new lacquer that was added. This method resulted in a very good
surface and without the scatter of lacquer over the entire side area
as would have been the case had I chosen to shoot the lacquer with a
spray gun or Preval type sprayer. |
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