Don’t look, it’s horrible!!!  What a poor old wreck, I’ve dived on less corroded ships at the bottom of the sea!

This one was built in 1964 and, sadly, Country Gents built around that time all have dodgy binding that falls apart.  That may provide content for another blog, but, for the time being I’m going to just strip it down and see if I can get it working and playing.

Just look at that, the damp has got to every part of the guitar, every bit of metal has started to rust.

What I’m going to do is to strip it right down and gently polish everything.

Luckily it’s got a large access panel in the back so I can get to the guts of the thing from there.

Ouch! no wonder the dampers wouldn’t move.  The whole mechanism was badly rusted.

Luckily I was able to just get the dremel with a wire brush to the nuts and bolts to get it apart.

None of the electrics were working at all, so I pulled the whole lot out…

The open switches are easy enough to clean…

And the pots I cleaned with switch cleaner.

Even every single screw needed to be cleaned…

With the body bare of all furniture I gave it a good in depth clean..

There we go, half done.  With it clean It’ll also need a god polish.

That’s to body done…

Next the neck and fretboard….

Steel wool to clean the surface and frets and Lemon-Oil to lubricate the fretboard.

With it as clean as I can get it, it’s time to put it all back together.

As good as it can be without replacing the old parts or having them re-plated.

All that’s needed now is to sort out the binding….

The only way to be able to play it, is to strip it all off and replace it.

I found some modern binding that just about matches the colour of the old stuff.

It’s about the right thickness and width.  Just slightly too large, so the first thing to do is to shave it down the right height.  A little fiddly using a file in the vice so that I get the top nice and square.

With it at about the right height I glued it into place.  I bound it up using strips cut from an old bicycle inner-tube.

With the glue dry I took the last couple of “thou” off the top of the binding with a cabinet scraper to blend it in with the top of the fretboard.

The same with the bottom of the neck.  Off with the old stuff, clean up the groove and glue in another strip.

Lastly that little bit at the heel of the neck.  I took the pickup out just to give me a little more space to work.

It’s time consuming, each little piece needs to be glued in place and left to dry for 24 hours.

There it is, looking much better.

The fret dots proved to be a little more of a problem.  Should have been easy, drill a small hole, glue in the black rod (only a couple of mm).  I cut the marker roughly flush and when the glue dries completely I’ll finish them off neatly with a sharp chisel.

All it needs now is a standard setup and it should be playable again.  First the neck set, just a little high.

so a small turn of the truss-rod.  About the only screw that wasn’t rusted solid!

The action up at the 12th fret wasn’t too bad, just a little low.

so up with the bridge a little.

It’s got a zero fret so nothing to be done up there so it’s all done.  Sadly showing it’s age, but then it is over 50 years old, but at least it’s playable again.

For more info about what I’ve got to offer check up www.guitar-george.co.uk