Since We Last Met
The
last post concluded with yours truly layering a super glue and rosewood dust concoction onto the damaged area of the headstock extension. This was to prevent the exposed wood from deteriorating any further. Here's the repaired area after scraping, sanding and a light coat of Minwax Antique Oil Finish.
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| Headstock Extension After Repairs |
The next task was removing the wonky nut, which I intended to reuse after cleaning. A few well placed cuts, a hammer, and a block off wood was what it took to dislodge this little fellow. Once detached, the mess of dried glue in the nut slot was more than evident. Cleaning this up required small chisels, blades, sandpaper, and a nut file.
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| Nut Detached. Here's What's Underneath |
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| Cleaning the Nut Slot |
Lowering the Bridge and Saddle
The only way to reduce the high upper fret action on this CS24-4 was to first lower the bridge to a suitable height, and then lower the saddle sufficiently. Let's start with the bridge, then. The bulk of the wood was first shaved off with a scraper, leaving a number of scratches. These scratches were then removed with successively finer grits of sandpaper, from 80 up to 400.
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| Reducing Thickness With a Scraper |
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| Sanding Through the Grits |
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| Bridge Ready for Ramping |
With the bridge lowered, it now needed to be ramped to provide sufficient string break angle over the saddle. On a bridge with bridge pins, I would have used a rotary tool to cut tapered slots from the bridge pin holes to the saddle. But as the strings load from the back on this bridge, a different approach was needed to achieve the desired string break angle. And so, I went to work with a rat tail file, elongating and deepening all six string slots.
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| String Channels Deepened and Elongated |
Once bridge ramping was taken care of, focus shifted to the saddle itself, which appeared to be stock. It was stained, cruddy and pretty chewed up from years of use, but reusable. The first task was to clean the saddle and remove the deep grooves cut into it by the strings. It took quite a while, but after a fair amount of scraping, sanding and polishing, the saddle looked way better. Following this, the height of the saddle was reduced in small increments by rubbing its base against a 150 grit diamond sharpening stone. Periodic checks were carried out, naturally, as there was always the danger of going too far.
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| Test-Fitting the Lowered Saddle |
Bridge and Fretboard Conditioning
At this point in time, no more modifications were needed as far as the ovangkol bridge or saddle were concerned, and the same held true for the ovangkol fretboard. All that was left, then, was to condition the wood with lemon oil. As dryness and a chalky appearance best described the condition of both bridge and fretboard, a rather heavy coat of lemon oil was applied and given time to soak in. Surprisingly, that one coat was all it took to sufficiently hydrate the wood.
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| Bridge Conditioned With Lemon Oil |
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| Bridge Conditioning Completed |
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| Fretboard Conditioned With Lemon Oil |
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| Fretboard Conditioning Completed |
Tuner Issues
We were in the home stretch now, and almost ready for restringing and final setup. But first, I needed to make sure that all six tuners were in working condition. The tuner bushing washers were mostly loose, as expected. Not a problem, though. A No. 10 wrench took care of this really quickly. I had a nasty surprise while tightening the buttons, though. The B-string tuner was missing both its plastic and metal washers, rendering it unusable. Thank goodness I had a few spare tuners in my parts drawer, and one of them consented to donate both its washers. Now, that's a tuner with a heart of gold!
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| B-String Tuner is Missing Both Washers |
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| Washers Taken From Donor Tuner |
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| B-String Tuner With Replacement Washers |
Restringing and Final Setup
Restringing was quick and painless, thanks to all six tuners being in fine shape. Neck relief and saddle height were also spot on. 12th fret action was 4/32" for the Low E, and 3/32" for the High E. It wasn't all roses, though. Throwing a spanner in the works was open string buzz, most noticeably on the High E. Raising the overall height of the nut slightly took care of the problem, thankfully. If you look closely at the pics of both sides of the nut below, you will notice a wood veneer shim beneath it.
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| Shimmed Nut - Left Side |
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| Shimmed Nut - Right Side |
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| CS24-4 Rehab Completed |
