But meanwhile back to where I left it.
My friend who owns the guitar sprung for some Waverly banjo tuners to replace the old friction tuners. You may recall it had a wine cork stuck on one of the tuners as a knob!
When you get fine quality tuners, you also get nice packaging. Check out the nice box.
The tuners are packed in there as if they were jewels.
Which, in a way, they are. They are very well made and are just beautiful. Compared to some of the other sets Waverly makes, these are not too expensive.
I spent about 5 minutes just looking at them before I took them out. I really didn't want to get my fingerprints on them. They're that nice.
I polished up the headstock in preparation for installing the new tuners. It's hard to tell in this picture, but it has a nice gloss to it now.
Here's a closeup of one of the tuners. You can see they have that classic 'offset' gearbox. They have planetary gears with a 4:1 ratio.
As I found out later when I used them, they are super smooth. Just a delight to use.
Note the locator pin on the bottom of the case.
It's a piece of cake (mmmm....cake) to install them. The holes have to be reamed out to 3/8 of an inch...I think.
Then you just take the top nut/ferrule off as well as its washer.
Slip the tuner up through the hole, put the ferrule nut on and tighten it up.
I used an awl to make a tiny divot on the back of the headstock for the locating pin(s), but it's probably not critical. I think the pins would go into the headstock when the tuners are tightened down.
Here they are installed on the guitar. They look absolutely perfect.
Stew-Mac sells different tuner buttons to fit these if you don't like the stock ivoroid. My friend opted for the stock buttons and they look terrific I think.
I have a set of these to put on my May-Bell tenor as well.
I polished the body of the guitar before I put it back together, since it's a lot easier to work with with no strings on it.
This is the 'before' shot of the top - it was fairly dirty and didn't have a lot of gloss.
I do a first pass with a weak solution of Simple Green in water - maybe a 15 to 1 ratio. Put that on a clean soft rag and have at it. Just dampen the rag - don't soak it.
You need to get the dirt off first - if you just polish you'll be grinding the dirt into the finish.
After a pass or two to get the worst of the grime off, I use Virtuoso cleaner followed by Virtuoso polish - both applied with a machine.
These old guitars were almost always finished with nitrocellulose lacquer. Unless the finish is totally gone, they polish up nicely.
You can see the top has a nice gloss after cleaning and polishing.
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The back and sides look really good and have a nice gloss now. This picture doesn't do it justice. It looks great in person.
The guitar may have been stained with a natural color stain before it was sprayed, but the wonderful amber color is due to the clear lacquer yellowing over time. Really a classic look.
I think I mentioned before that the top is spruce, and the back and sides are birch. Makes for a very light build.
Next, I'm cooking up a new bridge.
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