Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Many of you might remember the '60 Capri that I got from John Williams. It is in excellent structural shape, with virtually no neck deflection after over 45 years (heck, I had some after about 35!), and had never been seriously messed with. It had the wrong tuners, the upper guard had been removed (probably badly cracked as many are), and someone it the deep-dark, past had tried an amateur nitro resto, with predictably bad results.

The plan has been to restore it, and document the restoration for everyone's entertainment and education.

Well, I've been holding out on all of you...I got started on it right after the New Year, and have been photographing it all along. It's by no means completed yet, but about half-done and I think it's time to share the progress so far. Then we've got some surprises in store in the near future.

The guitar had two big cosmetic flaws that no way affected playability. First, there were some large chunks missing out of the end of the padauk fretboard:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/badboard.jpg

This is fairly common among older Capris, from what I've seen.

The second flaw was the generally over-enthusiastic use of sandpaper when the guitar was previously refinished. This resulted in the binding edges being rounded off and in some cases gone entirely (sanded away!), and the back plywood being sanded through to the crossply in two places.

The first flaw was an easy one to deal with. I had two options: to replace the entire board with a fresh piece of padauk, or to try to save the old board. Given such a choice, you always try to save, and this failing, you remanufacture. This 45-year-old padauk still bled bright red over everything everytime stripper touched it! However, this I found out when stripping the body proper. The fretboard was stripped by sanding.

Here is a shot of the original board, showing the wear and fading and generally poor condition of the frets:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/oldboard.jpg

Here I begin to sand the fretboard. You can see how taking off just the varnish and the oxidized few thousandths of top wood, reveals fresh, bright padauk right under the skin, so to speak. This is typical of this wood, BTW.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/board1.jpg

But what to do about those missing chunks? Well, as I sanded, and got to the body end of the fretboard, I noticed that once I got the varnish sanded off and the wood squared up and properly radiused, the missing chunks were much less obvious:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/fbsanded.jpg

So I decided to fill them. Superglue is transparent, long-lasting when not exposed to oxygen, and nice and hard when cured. I have a special grade of the stuff that's actually a bit thick and brushable. So what I did was build a quick masking-tape dyke at the end of the board, spray a bit of accelerator onto the end, and brush several coats of the glue onto just the last 1/4" of the board or so:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/tapefill.jpg

Then the end was re-sanded, squared, and re-radiused. Here's the result:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/boardend.jpg

If you look very closely at this enlarged view, you can barely make out the filled areas, but once the board is fretted and varnished, you will no longer be able to tell where the patched areas are.

Here is a shot of the fretboard, binding removed, and fret marker dots taken out:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/padauk.jpg

And here's those little red celluloid dots, which BTW are unavailable these last 25 years or so:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/jingle_jangle/1960%20365%20CAPRI/lildots.jpg

As you can see, they're 1/16" diameter red celluloid rod, cut into short lengths and inserted into holes drilled into the fretboard through the neck binding, then sanded flush with the binding.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: How to replace the back on a big Capri!

Wow. You did a fantastic job on the fretboard.

Great start to it, Paul. Another Phoenix project in the making here.

Excellent job, Paul.

Keep up the good work!

Interesting use of the superglue, Paul. I wouldn't have thought of it and even if I did, wouldn't have had the nerve to try!!

Great work as always, Curmudge!

Paul, something to consider: with all that nice padauk dust from sanding, some can be mixed into the gap-filling super glue as you brush it into the voids (provided it doesn't hasten the set time). This might be useful in larger voids. Experiment to determine the "kick" time. I use Pacer's "Zap-A-Gap" in my business as the prime filler. It's a medium-viscosity cyanoacrylate, about the consistency of maple syrup. The beauty of it is that it sets in minutes and gradually gets harder within the next hour or so. It can be sanded right after setting and if you're careful, can be sanded and polished as smooth as glass.

Paul, to mix the padauk dust with the superglue would have actually clouded the grain in this application. The nice thing about just applying glue straight from the bottle is that its clarity allows the uninterrupted grain to show through the glue and the subsequent coats of varnish.

I first used superglue--cyanoacrylate--back in 1970, when it was marketed by Eastman Kodak as "Eastman 910" and cost about $90.00 for a 5cc bottle. It only came in water-thin, and Eastman used it to bond optical elements to each other.

Since then, I've used all the major brands and most of the minors. Pacer makes a good grade, but my favorite is "Satellite City" for water-thin and for thicker stuff, this brushable, which is made by Loctite and which I get from McMaster-Carr.

When I built prototype show cars for Mazda, Ford, etc., my toolbox was never without several kinds of superglue. There is a black-tinted gapfiller which is the trick for assembling weatherstripping for car doors. The market has expanded to meet demand. 5ccs are now about $2.00 retail!

Paul, one question I have is, how do you work around the inlays ? When you sand the fretboard, do you have to sand around them ?

This is going to be a fascinating thread to follow.... Looking forward to seeing the end result!

Nice work, Paul....

Steve, the inlays are resin and must be sanded with a block, along with the wood. Otherwise you get waves in the varnish.

Really looking forward to the next installment Paul. Would it be letting the cat out of the bag to reveal the body colour, or is going to be a traditional colouring to match the vintage of the guitar?

It will be a nice, dark aged FG. Most FG Capris of this vintage look faded to my eye, but some have held up really nicely and darkened with age. I suspect it's got to do with instability of the old dyes used in the FG, and that the unfaded ones had mostly "case time".

Bring it on Paul!

Paul, it might play well to add just a hint of brown in the Fireglo....