Below is a picture of the Old Kraftsman ready to go, and a picture of before the restoration. Its come a long way!
Finally completed the Old Kraftsman today! Since I had so many finish problems on this guitar, I wanted to make sure it cured very well. I sanded the guitar with 800, 1000, and 2000 grit sandpaper after which I buffed with medium and fine pastes, then swirl remover. Today I made the pickguard, cut nut slots, and strung it up. I'll let the guitar settle in for a day or two and see if I need to make any tweaks. Hopefully I'll get more pictures posted soon!
I began clear coating the guitar this morning! It seems like everything I have tried to do on this guitar wanted to be difficult. I managed to fix up the majority of the finish problems I have in the last post - we'll see how it looks when its complete! When I painted on the binding, it was difficult to get the white to adequately cover the black finish right on the very edges. Eventually I got it, but had to put several coats on it. Then, once I was happy with the painted binding, I removed all of the tape to find that a lot of white had bled through the masking tape! So then I had to carefully use a razor blade to scrape the white paint off the black and try to keep a uniform looking binding. This was tedious to say the least! While scraping the "binding" couple spots the black paint chipped off, so then I had to drop fill these spots with black lacquer using a tooth pick. I sanded the entire guitar with 800 grit and 1000 grit sandpaper, only to find I had a couple more flaws in my black finish, so then I had to fog some of these spots in with my airbrush. I was a bit worried about removing the masking tape from the fretboard since I had so many problems when painting the binding. Thankfully it came off quite well and I only had to touch up one spot with a razor blade and I cleaned any sticky residue off the naptha. Also cleaned up the headstock logo yesterday. It doesn't look too bad, although I'm not entirely happy with it. If I ever have to do job like this again I will have to find a better way of masking/spraying something like this. Very tedious work! A couple spots in the logo appear darker then others but I am hoping this will go away once I start clear coating. Been working on painting the Old Kraftsman. Previously I mentioned that parts of the guitar had been sanded through the top ply in areas, and now I have been having problems with the finish in those areas. The finish sprays on fine and later it starts to crack like in the picture. I sanded the finish back, resprayed, sanded back, resprayed, etc. Seems to be better now but still not perfect. I don't know if the wood had been exposed to some kind of chemical in the past or what caused the problem. Wish I knew! Using a picture of the headstock of another Old Kraftsman, I made up some scaled templates and carefully cut out the designs on some cardstock, taped in place on the headstock, and used an airbrush to paint the headstock logo. I'm quite happy with how the headstock turned out. Still have to clean up the letters with holes in them (O, D, R, etc) and clean up a little overspray that worked its way between the templates and the headstock. I think it will look great when its cleaned up and clear coated. Next, I taped off the body in an attempt to paint on the white "binding" (these guitars had painted on binding instead of real binding). Hope this works out well! Once I finish the headstock logo and the binding, I'll be on to clear coating the entire guitar! Check out the Hagstrom project to see a quick picture of the in-progress
I made a new bridge out of rosewood. I used measurements off a 1950's Gibson archtop bridge to get me some rough measurements, but this guitar needs a lower profile bridge due to its lower neck angle, so I started redesigning it as I went. After roughing out the bridge and radiusing the top to a 12" radius, I taped it in place on the top, attached the tailpiece, and put a 1st and 6th string on to get an idea of what the string spread at the bridge should be. Then I roughed out the intonated section of the bridge. Still needs some sanding but it turned out pretty good! First step in this restoration was to get rid of the old paint and try to sand out some of the imperfections that the previous owner had put in it. Its really a shame that this guitar was sanded so harshly in its past because there are actually some areas where the first layer of laminate was sanded through! I used lacquer stripper to carefully remove the finish from the fretboard as well.
This Old Kraftsman archtop belongs to my dad, and I'll be doing a full restoration of it. When dad got it, a previous owner had sanded most of the original finish off with about 40 grit paper (leaving tons of deep scratches and even sanding through some of the laminate top in places) and it was painted white if I remember correctly. Dad stripped it, but never completed the project, and I'm glad to be able to work on it. All the parts are in a plastic bag, although the guitar will require a new bridge to be made. The plan is to do a full restoration in black. I think it
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