ca. 1936 Regal-made ex-Banjo Bill Carson Dobro Tenor Guitar Restoration, Pt. 5: Fingerboard, Tuners, Nut, Saddles and it's done!

Home stretch on the ex-Banjo Bill Carson Regal-made Dobro tenor guitar.

I'm going to re-dye the fingerboard. I'm not sure of the species of wood used, but I've read a lot of references indicating Regal, Kay, Harmony and other Chicago makers often used pearwood for fingerboards, then dyed them to make the look like ebony. In fact, quite a few Regal ads refer to an "ebonized fingerboard."

At any rate, I used some naptha to wipe down the board and remove any sawdust residue and dirt.

This is what I've been using to stain fingerboards. Fiebling's leather dye.  It's what Stew-Mac used to sell for this use. Now I see they've changed to a brand of India ink.

I will probably switch to the ink going forward. I've used the leather dye for some time, but I have found it lacking. For one thing, it's really messy. And for another thing, as I found out on this guitar, it stains bindings. For some reason, I though it didn't, but it does.

You can see I did mask the neck binding, but some dye still got on the binding. I scraped it off, no big deal, but it's just a pain. I think any kind of dye is best for a new unfretted board. A lot harder to apply to to an existing instrument. I've done it in small areas, but not a whole board until now.

Maybe the India ink will be better. This is not something I do a lot, so it will probably be some time before I find out.

It's easy to apply. I used a small brush to paint it onto the board. And over my nice shiny new frets. The dye won't adhere to the frets, but you will need to wipe excess off. In hindsight, I should have dyed (died? lol) before I fretted the board.

The whole board after a coat of dye. The wood really drank up the dye - I did a couple applications to make the finish even.

Then I installed the tuners.

First I trimmed the dowels I used to fill the old tuner holes using a flush cut saw.

One of my pet peeves is people installing new tuners that require new holes. Eventually someone may have to replace the tuners and deal with the holes.

Sure, you can leave the holes, but that's sloppy work and leaves the holes open for moisture to get in and rot the wood. It's not difficult to find tuners that will mount the same way as the originals. The owner and I believe the originals were banjo style tuners - how hard could it have been to find some?

After the dowels are cut flush, I used red mahogany stain to finish them. Not a perfect match, but the dowels' end grain will be protected and from a few feet away, the holes won't be obvious.

These nice Five Star tuners will go into the guitar. They have planetary gears, are good quality and have the proper 'period' look.

Note the arrow showing the little locator pin on the base. This penetrates the headstock and keeps the whole tuner assembly from rotating under string tension.

Slip the tuners through and tighten them down.

From the back. They look nice I think.

Now to make a new bone nut. The original nut was cracked on the high A string, so I need to make a replacement. I use bone. It's the best for tone hands down.

I use a string spacing rule to mark the inside strings. Mark the outside strings - maybe 1/8 of an inch from the edges of the fingerboard or whatever is appropriate.

Then find a set of marks on the rule that line up with those two marks and use the inner set of marks for the inside strings. The rule was made for guitars but works fine for 4-string instruments; just need to find the appropriate marks.

I use an X-acto saw to mark the initial nut slots - just enough to hold the strings in place.

Then I use a half-pencil laid on the first fret to mark the nut. This mark is approximately the maximum depth to file the slots down to. In other words, we will wind up filing a bit shy of the mark.

The mark is not super accurate, it's an estimation of the slot depth. In practice, I put the string on, file each slot a bit, check the string's height at the first fret, etc. I like to get my fret slots so the string can be at its lowest height - thousandths of an inch - over the fret.

Here's the half-pencil. Sand a pencil to half its diameter - flat - on one side. You can't resharpen them easily, but pencils are cheap, right? A belt sander is ideal but be careful you don't sand your fingertips in half too!

I do have one of the Stew-Mac nut slotting gauges and have used it some. But it seems so clunky to me to take on and off - using different gauges for each slot - that I usually go with the old method and get the slot depths by eye.

Part of the way there. The low string is out of its slot - I was probably filing it.

Once the slots get a bit lower than the top of the nut, file or sand the top of the nut down. The final depths should put the wound strings about halfway down in their slots (half of the string exposed) and the unwound strings should sit just below the top of the nut. Hard to explain but if you look at a nut and ponder you should get it.

Note how close I am to the depth mark. On this nut, I actually wound up making the slots a bit deeper than the mark - again - the mark is a guide - it's not the final measurement.

Filing the nut slots. I have a set of gauged files. They're nice because they are not just gauged for width - they also are rounded so the slots will have rounded edges so the slot bottoms will be rounded and strings will not hang up on.

In this shot, the slots are done. I just need to file the top of the slot more round and sand the ends of the nut level with the fingerboard.

Hey, that stain came out good, huh? Looks like ebony.

The finished nut along with the plastic original.

I polish the bone up to 6000 grit and use fine polishing compound to make it look like a piece of jewelry. I also like to file any sharp corners off so the player's hand won't get hung up on them.

And the nut fitted on the guitar.

The end pin was very loose fitting in the body. So much that it kept slipping out.

So I took some toothpicks, fit them around the pin and glued them in. The pin itself isn't glued, it can still slide out, but it's a much tighter fit now.

Before you say, "man, what a redneck repair," I'll tell you that I learned this technique to fill a hole from Dan Erlewine's repair book!

After the glue dries, clip the ends of the toothpicks. They only protrude into the hole enough to grip the end pin.

I'm not sure you could do this from outside the guitar - since I had access with the resonator off, it was easy.

One other 'feature' on this guitar - the end block is not centered on the end. Note how the hole is off-center on the block - it's in the middle of the end but the block is not.

Since the string height is now changed due to the neck reset, I need to make new saddles for the bridge.

The original saddles were made from a soft-ish wood, so I decided to use maple instead. Should get better tone and volume.

I cut the saddles on my fabulous Hegner scroll saw. Thank you, TMD!

File the saddles to thickness to fit into the aluminum spider.

Overview of the fitting. I got so focused on the job that I didn't take more pictures, sorry!

You can see the saddles are a press fit into the slots on the spider.

The saddles wound up with small slots on top to hold the strings in place - those pencil marks are about where I made the slots - and the saddles are filed round on the top like a standard acoustic guitar saddle would be.

Then polished up the resonator and put it back together.

The lucky owner is really happy with it. He's a fabulous banjo player, so this is right up his alley.

The tone is very nice. I expected it to be harsh and metallic, but it's not at all. It's fairly bright, but it's very clear and almost delicate in tone, with great note separation. I believe most of the tone comes from the resonator alone - the body is so thick that it doesn't vibrate and contribute to the tone at all.

I feel privileged to have worked on such a fine - and historic - instrument.