Silvertone project

A few words about refinishing guitars:

-Don't do it unless it's absolutely neccessary! A beat-up original finish will always be worth more than a refinish.

- If your guitar is worth a lot of money you should let a professional luthier do the job.

- If you decide to do it yourself you should learn on really cheap guitars with no collectors value

- Don't rush, the quality of the finish is equal to the effort you put into it.

I do my lo-budget refinishes with acrylic laquer in spray-cans (available from auto parts stores). Acrylic is easy to work with, not too poisonous compared to 2-component laquers and not too expensive. I do recommend the use of a breathing mask, this stuff is not a good idea to get in your lungs. I do my spraying outside which means that I do these projects in the summer or early fall. Watch out for rain and other moisture. You don't want to leave stuff outside to dry too long, birds shit, leaves fall and cars raise dust, none of which you want to get on your guitar.

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Assembly:

Today I started assembling the guitar.

Body and neck screwed together, Schaller strap locks (I use these on all my guitars) installed.

 Silvertone logo from Banana Guitars, tuners from Kevin Bacon, ferrules from Andy T and truss rod cover from LONDED.

I ran into a problem during assembly: the holes on the tailpiece didn't line up with the ones one the body. This is not unusual with old guitars. When I drilled new holes I used one of the old ones and put the E strings and the bridge on before drilling to make sure that I got it straight. A tailpiece that is not in line will pull the bridge sideways and the strings will not be aligned with the fretboard.

 I used the nut from my Meteor neck (which will be replaced anyway) and a temporary bridge to assemble the guitar. I was pleasantly surprised: the neck which looked a bit crooked before assembly was playable straight from the start. The guitar was nice to play like this and sounded good acoustically. This looks promising!

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