In the November issue, we started to refurbish a doubleneck mandolin/guitar I made for Jerry Schafer in 1977. It needed a new wiring harness, tuners, binding repair, new frets, and a good setup. With teammates Ceil Thompson and Gene Imbody sharing the load, we continued the work.
1) Gene – our go-to guy for tough electronics jobs – dug into the complicated wiring harness.
2) In part one, I made new bridge studs and thumbwheels; being larger and heavier, they’ll improve tuning stability and coupling to the body. But, that meant we had to enlarge the holes in the bridge. To avoid chipping the chrome plating, I wiped a thin coat of super glue around the holes, top and bottom, then lightly clamped the bridge in a drill-press vise and lined up the holes vertically with a dowel gauge mounted in the chuck. Once it traveled smoothly through the hole, I tightened the vise.
3) I then bored the holes larger to fit the new posts. After drilling, the hardened glue removed easily with acetone applied with a cotton swab.
4) Ceil replaced the worn out Schaller tuners. As luck would have it, one screw head snapped off, leaving its shaft in the peghead.
5) The fix involved StewMac’s Screw Rescue Kit – a steel tube with teeth on the ends that acts as an extractor – and a cutter to make wooden plugs fit through the extractor hole.
6) Ceil clamped a 3/8″–thick piece of acrylic with a 3/16″ hole over the screw to keep the extractor centered and keep its teeth under control.
7) The result was a clean (slightly oversized – 3/16″) hole that exposed the screw…
8) …making it easy to grab the screw with a hemostat.
9) To fill the hole made by the extractor, Ceil used walnut from the same piece I used to cut the guitar’s neck in ’77 (it also went into Albert King’s Lucy as well as Jerry Garcia’s “Jerrycaster” in ’71).
10) After coating the plug with hide glue, Ceil pushed it in, wiped off the squeeze-out, and clamped it flush.
11) Once the plug was dry, she drilled a new hole and drilled in the screw to cut threads before reinstalling the tuner.
12) She polished the new frets that she’d installed on both necks. She’ll also put a new bone nut on each neck.
In part three, we’ll repair and replace the binding, then string it up and see how it sounds.
Dan Erlewine has been repairing guitars for more than 50 years. The author of three books, dozens of magazine articles, he has also produced instructional videotapes and DVDs on guitar repair. From 1986 through his retirement in late 2019, Erlewine was part of the R&D team, and company liaison for Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Shop Supply. Today, he operates a repair shop in Athens, Ohio, as well as building replicas of the guitars he made for Albert King and Jerry Garcia in 1972. This column has appeared in VG since March, 2004. You can contact him at danerlewine@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
