Guitars are meant to be played and enjoyed, so it always makes us smile to see one that has clearly been doing just that. This 1957 Martin 000-18 wouldn’t color its hair to hide the gray; it wears its age proudly.  So we put away the airbrush and the buffing wheel  and focused on getting it structurally stable and playing better than ever. It took a neck reset, refret, and some sealing of cracks to get it there, but the results were worth the effort.

The cracks on the sides are pretty severe. It will take some patching and, okay maybe a little touch-up to get them stable.

Here, Dan gets the side pieces to fit together perfectly before gluing and clamping them back together.

He fills the larger gaps with mahogony and colored epoxy, then files it level.

Some stain and grain lines were enough to make these patches look like they belong.

Next it’s on to the neck reset. This is a well-known and well-documented procedure where the neck is removed from the body and the dovetail joint is re-shaped to achieve correct playing action. More than 50 years of steel strings pulling on the neck has compressed the wood inside the joint and made the strings sit unbearably high.

Not every guitar is worth the trouble and expense involved in a neck reset, but a Martin holds its value very well. Even one that looks old and worn out like this is a no-brainer for this job.

First we use an electric heating element to soften the glue under the fretboard tongue.

Once the tongue is loose from the body, we drill 2 small access holes through a fret slot and inject steam from an espresso maker to loosen the glue inside – the second hole provides a route for the steam to escape. The wooden jig helps push the neck out of the dovetail joint once it comes loose.

Once the neck is off, we quickly remove the old glue residue from both the neck and body before it hardens and prepare both the neck pocket and the neck heel for resetting.

Dan uses a razor sharp chisel to remove tiny layers of mahogany from the neck heel. Then to really zero it in, he pulls strips of sandpaper to make tiny adjustments until the angle is just right.

We like to say that baseball is called a “game of inches” and guitar repair is a game of thousandths of an inch. Each pull of sandpaper changes the angle ever so slightly; so he counts how many pulls he does on one side of the neck heel, then does the same number of pulls on the other side.

When the neck angle is just right, it gets firmly clamped and glued back into place. When the glue is set, it’s time to replace the old frets.

To soften any glue inside the fret slots, Dan heats each fret with a modified soldering iron and carefully pulls it out.

Once the frets are out, he uses a carpenters level and adhesive sandpaper to level the fret board.

Next he cuts each new fret and hammers it home.

The new frets have to be trimmed, shaped, and leveled before polishing.

Since the new frets sit slightly taller than the old worn ones, we made a new bone nut. This lets the strings clear the fret tops without buzzing.

The improved neck angle allows us to get the playing action perfect, with enough saddle left for adjustments over the coming years.

A neck-reset can effectively give an old guitar like this a new life, promising many more years of music. It would have been a shame to hang this guitar on the wall when that 50 year old wood makes such a sweet sound!

The owner of this 1930 Martin 518 saw work we performed on another Martin and entrusted us to repair a lengthy side crack, separated bridge, and to reset the neck angle. This is work we frequently perform on older Martins, but we thought you might like to see it done on a real pre-war model.

For more than a century, guitarists have recognized something special about Martin guitars. Great feel, great sound, great looks. But we repairmen have grown to love them for  a different reason. For most of that time period, Martin has built guitars with certain qualities that make extensive repairs possible even on very old instruments. Until they recently began bolting necks into bodies, all of their parts have been held together by precise fitting joints and small amounts of glue. A little bit of heat or steam in just the right place allows us to loosen that glue just enough to correct even very small changes. They suggest that even 70 years ago these craftsmen understood that some day their work would need to be taken apart and put back together. Thanks guys!

We began this repair by addressing the most obvious problem: a split in the lower side that stretched across most of the lower bout. We glued and clamped it together using spool clamps and traditional hot hide glue. For a guitar like this with its original finish intact, we’ll skip the touch-up and just try to smooth and clean the crack area so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Next we move on to the neck. Over time, the pull of steel strings has pulled the neck into a steeper angle. As a result, the string action gets higher and higher, requiring the bone saddle to be lowered nearly to the top of the ebony bridge. Since we can’t go any lower with this saddle, we’ll remove the neck completely and reset the dovetail joint so we have a healthier angle and more comfortable playing action. At the same time, we noticed that the back of the bridge was beginning to pull off the top, so with the owners permission, we removed it and cleaned the gluing area. We’ll glue it back down later.

The neck reset begins with removing the thirteenth fret and drilling a tiny hole in the fret slot where we’ll inject steam to loosen the glue that holds the neck joint together. Why the thirteenth fret? Because That’s where you find the end of the dovetail’s tenon on every guitar. In the picture below you can see the two drill holes right at the edge of the tenon.

Once the neck is off, Dan removes the remaining old glue while it’s still soft. Then he changes the neck angle by removing small amounts of material from the neck heel. How small? He pulls strips of sandpaper against the neck heel, keeping count of how many pulls per side. Once the angle is right, the neck goes back on. (You’ll notice the bridge is now back in place too.)

The next day, when the new glue is set, he planes the fretboard level and replaces the frets… usually. But in this case, the fret wire is actually steel bars, not modern nickel fret wire. Bar frets are not only part of the guitar’s history and character, they’re also no longer made. So to make the original frets taller, he raises them by filling the fretboard slots with glue and ebony dust. Then he hammers them back into place, levels the tops and dresses the fretboard.

The final steps are a new vintage style bone saddle, handmade here for this guitar alone, then a fresh set of lightweight strings – to put minimal stress on this old instrument, and our Works setup.

This pre-WWII Martin has survived nearly seventy years and with this work, should be playable for many more. It sounds incredible.

It’s hard to say how many times we’ve repaired a guitar that was damaged by airline baggage handling.  It’s a big number though. This Martin 000-15 had a rough flight and split open like a can of beans. Unfortunately the damage was bad enough that sizeable pieces of the side were missing completely. For this repair, we needed to repair the cracks, replace the missing areas, and touch it up to make it look like it never happened. Make sure your seat is in the upright position; this ride gets bumpy.

Here’s a good look at the damage to this guitar. There’s a good size top crack there, but next to that huge side split you almost don’t see it. To keep all the crack’s from slipping under clamp pressure, we want to get all of the main breaks glued up at the same time. This means four hands on the guitar, pushing from the inside, pushing from the outside, applying glue, and setting clamps. (Not to mention one set of hands snapping a quick picture or two.)

After letting the glue set up we removed the clamps and found things looking a little less scary already.

After replacing the missing mahogony, we overspray the area so the repair lines are less visible. Then we draw in grain lines, …

…match the side finish to the rest of the guitar, and apply a matted top coat. Add a fresh set of strings and “The Works” setup and this guitar is ready for a safe landing!