This highly unusual little number was brought to me in quite a sorry state. Missing a fret and with the neck and fretboard split completely in two, back peeling from the sides, nut missing, bridge missing, tuners seized, cracks in the top, a chip in the scratch guard and an almost completely worn off finish.

We decided to try to keep the aged rustic look as it was a sentimental piece to the customer. It started with gluing up all the pieces into one instrument. The heel joint was the first and most major bit, then the back, top and sides could be glued back up and skimmed smooth.

Once the major cracks and splits were taken care of, I moved on to scraping & sanding the entire thing smooth again, trying to leave the patina but tidy things up and prep for finishing.

The missing fret was an interesting one as this used brass bar frets, the likes of which you very rarely see today. Luckily I had some spare brass kicking around, as you do, so I set to work with the grinder and files to replicate the existing frets as closely as possible. The attention and time spent here made the installation a breeze, it seated beautifully and with a dab of glue we had a complete fretboard once again.

The machine heads were highly tarnished so they were removed and scrubbed. I could have went further and taken them do a bright shine again but that would have looked out of place, not what we’re going for here. A less-than-charming character trait of old instruments is the use of slot head screws like the 8 or so used to secure these tuners. The work of the devil, those things.

With all the mechanical stuff out of the way it was time to french polish! Somewhere around 10-12 coats of amber shellac went on to give it it’s final shine and a long awaited layer of protection.

After roughing out the height of the new bridge I set to stringing. The tailpiece was designed for loop-end strings but getting hold of an appropriate 12 string set was impossible and a custom set was going to cost around £30, so I painstakingly removed the ball end from 12 of my acoustic singles and fitted those. The nut was then crafted out of a bone blank and slotted to accept the unusual 4×3 string arrangement.

A not so quick tune up later and it’s ready to go for the first time in many many years. This one was extra fun and something more than a little different. I do enjoy my job!