I had an aging Yamaha beginner’s classical guitar - a cheap model, all laminated woods. It was never very good by 2012 it was developing various problems. I decided to brutalize it for some fun & silly project.
As a joke I hacked it up and installed a junk humbucker, a Strat trem arm, and glued on a pair of black speed knobs. I called it “Strausstercaster”.
Eventually this joke wore off and I asked a group of online buds if they had any ideas for a project. My friend Jossy Meza Peraza en Sinaloa, Mexico wondered if it would make an interesting decorative shadowbox for spare stings and other guitar-related miscellany. I decided to try it.
I found a tutorial on removing a soundboard at ultimate-guitar-repair.com .
The tut assumes that you begin with a valueable instrument in need of repair without damage. I had the advantage that this was not a repair job, but neither did I want it to damage it badly enough to ruin the project.
Off with the joke parts and let the craftiness begin!According to UGRonline the first step is to gently scrape the finish from the side of the binding all the way around, then pry with a very thin tool to remove all of the top edge binding. After scraping in several places it became evident that this guitar didn’t have any binding, only a painted stripe. My attempts to photograph this step were fruitless, but from here the trail of photographic evidence is complete enough to guarantee conviction before any jury.
Next : remove the fret at the body joint - in this case the 12th. It pulled out easily with a small pair of nippers.
... then use the empty fret slot to sever the fingerboard at the body joint with an X-Acto saw.
I was instructed to use the household clothes iron to heat the severed end of the fingerboard, after which it could easily be pried away.
This was true, but oddly you’ll notice it wasn’t the glue between fingerboard & soundboard that softened, it was the glue between layers of the laminated soundboard.
This didn't matter since I wouldn't be needing to re-install the fingerboard.
The fingerboard tail is splintered only because I first tried to pry it off without the heat.
Next the soundboard itself is removed using more heat and a putty knife. UGR recommended grinding the corners on a putty knife until they were round. I used an old putty knife from my tool shed, unmodified. The first insertion of the putty knife was made slightly more difficult by the fact that the guitar had no binding and so I had no “shelf” to help me begin, but still the soundboard came off much more easily than I expected. A few minutes with iron and nearly 1/4 of the circumference would loosen with one pry and tug. It only splintered when I got to the edges of the warmed area. Soundboard removal took less than 30 minutes.
With the soundboard gone the project became easier to visualize. The 2 lower back braces seemed to make logical locations for internal shelves.
The braces would support the back edges of the shelves. It occurred to me that the interior binding would serve nicely to hold up the ends of the shelves, negating any need for added shelf support. My first expense for the project was a new wood chisel ($9.99) to remove chunks of top & back binding strips to make slots for the shelves.
At Lowe’s Home Improvement store I found finish-sanded shelving in the “craft wood” dept that was the right width, acceptably thin and available in 24-inch lengths for $2.65 apiece. This photo also shows a can of Minwax stain I bought but did not use and subsequently returned for refund.
The shelving slid nicely along the notches in the edging to rest on the tops of the back braces. I fixed them in place with ordinary hide glue. I also glued-n’-screwed a salvaged top brace under the leading edge of the lower shelf then used that widened surface to glue-n’-screw the guitar bridge into nearly its original position.
I wanted to have strings on the finished piece. I chose ball-end strings because they would be simpler to install, and since the fragile structure would not allow the strings to be brought to tension traditional tie-end strings wouldn’t be applicable. Ernie Ball ball-end classical strings at $6.99 were the cheapest ball-end nylon set at the Tucson GC.
Unfortunately when it came time to install the strings I realized I had mistakenly attached the bridge upside-down!
Not just screwed on, of course, but GLUED-n’-screwed! The bridge was on backwards to stay and the piece was never intended to be playable, so I just slid the strings down through the stop-block and looped them back over the top toward the headstock.
I applied barely enough tension to keep the strings from hanging slack.
... and there she hangs.
It is unique, useful, and certainly fits my decor. Total outlay less than $24 & under 2 hours’ work.
In retrospect I wish I had put more thought into the location of the shelves to leave a bit more room between them. Many string packages will not fit onto the bottom shelf standing up, though a few of the boxed types will. Despite this one small disappointment, I like it and I'm glad I did this.
Thanks, Jossy!
© 2013 Raymond Blowers
