Since the guitar was all cleaned up I decided to take a little clear amber and mix it with some denatured alcohol to thin it down. I gave the fretboard a couple of goings over just wiping it on with a piece of old cotton t-shirt, then I figured while I’m at it, why not give the whole body a quick once over? I’ve got it hanging and drying now and I’ll get some pics once she is dry. I figured since I’m going to have a real bridge and good tuners either tomorrow or Friday I may as well do this now so it has a chance to dry. Once she dries I’ll use some polish to smooth her out.

For the clear amber I mixed about 1 part clear amber shellac with 2 parts denatured alcohol to get it nice and thin. I used a cotton t-shirt to apply it, let it dry until it was dry to the touch and then wiped it all down again with another thin coat. I did this three times. I then let it dry for about 8 hours, its pretty warm here and it was dry to the touch within 5 minutes after each coat. Considering it was very little shellac it was mostly the alcohol drying off leaving a very thin coat of clear amber over everything.

Once it was dried I went over it very lightly with 000 steel wool just enough to smooth out any lines left from using a t-shirt as an applicator. I then grabbed a clean t-shirt and some guitar polish and proceeded to thoroughly hand polish it twice. The guitar is looking real nice now, the finish looks much deeper than it really is. The wood grain looks incredible and I’m going to pickup the parts to put her back together tomorrow. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do for a bridge since I only need something about 3/8" tall. I’ll figure it out when i see what kinds of parts some of the local guitar stores have laying around. I also polished the frets again with steel wool to remove any of the amber. I can’t wait to get the guitar back together and start playing her.

Of course what I did for the finish would probably make most people wince, but it worked for me YMMV. I probably did all the wrong things and just happened to get lucky.

So far I’ve given the guitar a quick cleaning with "Goo Gone" which is an orange based cleaner, it took off a good layer of gunk and grime. The clothes were coming back black with years of built up filth. I’ll give it a better cleaning after its fully rehydrated. I also wiped down the fretboard with lemon oil. I’ll also repair the cracks with small wood cleats. The neck feels good in my hand but I’ll have to wait until it has strings to get a real feel for it. I’m hoping it will turn into a nice little front porch guitar.

I’ve been rehydrating it for a few days now. Solid wood guitars need moisture or they dry out and crack. This guitar had two minor cracks that are already sealing up nicely with the added moisture. It also has a really cool vintage blues vibe going for it. You can just feel the mojo holding this old guitar in yoiur hands. After some research and showing it to people that know more about these types of guitars than I do, we are estimating this to be made in the early 50’s. She looked like she was played a lot many years ago so someone was enjoying her many years ago. I’ve always had a weakness for cheap guitars that need some TLC. Its a great feeling to find an old abused guitar and bring it back to life.

I pulled these tuners off a real cheap guitar (first act acoustic, about 1/2 size) They fit so I threw them on for now so I can at least string it up and see how things are before spending much money on it. I’ll have to either make a bridge or buy one. It has the chrome tail piece (I forgot to take a picture of it). The tail piece screws to the bottom of the guitar with three small screws, then wraps around the front to hold the string ends, its about 5" long and in nice shape. It is designed to strings with balls on the end and a floating bridge.

Ok, I got some pics, my camera sucks but here they are:

I don’t really care for the white blocks on the neck, they are painted on and look to be original. I think I’d like to find a way to remove the white. I took a closer look at the wood grain through the sound hole and it matches the back perfectly. Also I put a small mirror inside and looked at the inside of the top, it matches the outside of the top too. Another thing is when I first started the back and top were shaped similar to the dryed out Taylor that they used in the video on the Taylor web site to demonstrate rehydrating a dry guitar. You can see the video here: http://www.taylorguitars.com/see-hear/ Click on "Performance Tips/maintenance on the right side menu and you can see a short video where he shows the symptoms of a dry guitar and another how he brings it back to shape using moisture. This guitar has reacted the same way as the one in the video. The top and back arch were non-existant until the third day of rehydrating. Now they are both looking real good. The top crack is almost invisible now, if you didn’t know where to look you’d never find it. And the crack on the back also has closed up completly, at first I could slide a buisness card through the back crack and drop it into the guitar body, now it just looks like a long hair laying on the back of the guitar.

From what I was reading it seems that this might be one made before Oscar Schmidt sold the Stella name to Harmony. Everything I’ve read says that they were much better made guitars when O.S. was making them. I’ve looked very close on the headstock and there is no sign of any letters at all. The neck is also nice and tight to the body. Also on the neck I’ve looked very close at the white spaces and there is no sign of any different position markers that were painted over. Even with a magnifying glass I can’t detect anything that looks like a position marker painted over.

and…

The guitars fret board appears to be walnut., or at least stained to look like it. The frets are all thin and low, but they appear to be in great shape.