Circa 1940 Martin Tenor Ukulele Renovation and Clean-Up, Pt. 2

When we left our circa 1940 Martin ukulele, it was on the workbench about to get a bath.  A big bath.  Enough to clean off 70 years of dirt and grime.

I took the tuners off so I could clean them up and polish them.  It will also be easier to clean the headstock with them off.  Always hard to get around those sting posts.

A cleaned up tuner on the right, and a dirty (Unclean?  Sounds Biblical.) tuner on the left.

I used a weak mixture of Simple Green to get some of the dirt off, then polished with Mother's Wheel Polish.  Good stuff.

Also polished the knobs with Novus #2 plastic polish.

Glad I took them off, it was a lot easier to worth with them not being on the uku.

I used Kramer's Best Blemish Clarifier followed by Kramer's Antique Improver.

I may not have mentioned this, but this thing was really filthy.  I'm guessing it was played a lot, the original owner (the seller's grandfather) passed away, and then it sat parked for a while.

It took numerous - as in 7 or 8 passes with the Clarifier to get the dirt off.  This picture shows some of the dirt - this after like 3 or 4 passes - that was coming off.  Changed rags a number of times.

But the upside is you can also see how good it's starting to look!  I can't recommend Kramer's stuff enough.  It's all natural and works wonders.

You may recall heavy black marks on the heel.  All gone.  Banished from the Martin ukulele kingdom!

If you thought my old Martin's frets were disgusting, that was nothing.  Look at all the crud I scraped off.  Ugh.  Gross.

I made 7 or 8 passes with the Dunlop fretboard cleaner.  The board was almost black before - now it looks like rosewood again.