MIMF

It's good to see ALL you guys!

I have soldered them back on before. Give it a try!

Yes, it does!

That's cool Steve! One suggestion, consider a 3/16 or 1/4" piece for the top instead of a veneer. That will let you have the thickness you want and also it will allow you to bolt the pots and switch in place, otherwise if you have a middle core section bandsawn out, how will you mount the contr...

Yes, that looks good, and Steve that is good too. When I do this I resaw thin pieces off of each side of the board. It makes a better match, but since you are putting a veneer on the top it won't matter much.

I agree with Gordon. I would cut off a thinner piece, to serve as the "back", and then take the thicker central piece to the bandsaw and after sawing right into the center where the end pin goes, saw out the "chambers". Then glue the "back" on to the middle section, and...

Very cool! i could play that.

All good advice here. but I will say that you need a bigger pipe, too. A pipe that small will not spread the heat over a larger area of the wood, you need to get a decent sized area of the side hot. Even if you move it back and forth it'll take forever to heat a large enough area to easily bend.

If you tighten the rod just a bit and then plane and sand them flat, when you loosen the rod you should have a bit of relief built in. Then cut your slots and fret it.

That is going to be quite problematic if you ask me. It won't work because fretting the string will interrupt what you want a sympathetic string to do. In order for you not to pick or pluck it, the difference between the two strings would have to be large, and that would mean really high action...I ...

These guitars are very different from a regular laminated top guitar. I had an original one for a while, and it was amazing what i saw. the top is very thick and laminated and the bracing is gigantic and quite different from anything else. it will never be a good acoustic guitar no matter what you d...

It is pretty much impossible to give you much advice without seeing it, or some good photos. But it sounds to me like a whole new fingerboard would be a good thing.

That's great! My friend Jim would approve.

i wonder that also. If you truly do have a mess as you say then it would be better to do it over. Use wood glue.

Good job!

Wood is of course a very good way to fix it, and it's just good to know that it's filled with real rosewood. On the other hand, a fill is a fill, right? What difference does it make what the fill is, if it isn't going to be wood? It would be hard to do with wood and make it look nice. I know dust an...

In my opinion I would not do this without re-bracing the top with a nice X-brace. That makes a world of difference in the tone of the finished guitar, they didn't take much care in doing that in these old ones.

I can't add too much to that!

Yes, that's an Arion parlor guitar, made by Lyon and Healy. It's a mid grade guitar from back then, but these days the woods used for these would be seen as very nice. it's an adirondack top, mahgoany back and sides...it would be a good guitar if you completely rebuild it. I've done a bunch of these.

Using eight of those tuners on a smaller instrument like an octave mandolin makes it very neck-heavy. Thats a lot of metal up there for a small instrument. Maybe you should consider regular mandolin tuners. I like that much better on my instruments.