Vintage Martin Repair questions

Hello all!

I have a 1930-'37 Martin Style 0 Martin Ukulele that I'm planning to sell. A previous owner had some cracks on it glued. It holds together well, but there is a bit of an indent, and the cracks are very visible. I would like to fill these cracks in, and am wondering what would be the best way to do that? I've attached three pictures, so you can see how they look.

Thank you in advance for your help!

If you don't already know how to disguise those cracks, that tells me you shouldn't even think of trying!

Cosmetic work of this kind is really, really hard to do well - it requires tons of experience doing similar work, and even then I'm not sure you'd be successful. Much more likely you will make those cracks stand out to the eye, and also make it difficult (perhaps impossible) for someone experienced to fix them.

If this were a $200 uke, and my own, and I intended to keep it, then as a fractionally more experienced amateur I might try the following:

1. Check over the crack repairs and redo any which were less good than I thought I could achieve, using hot hide glue.

2. Find a piece of mahogany which is an exact colour and grain match under the finish (which is what? nitro? French polish? Another problem to solve).

3. Cut V shaped grooves along each crack, inlay a matching V-shaped strip of my mahogany (hide glue again), scrape back to a perfect (oh yeah) level with the rest of the top.

4. Refinish over the patches, somehow blending my new finish to the old.

Then I'd stand back and think, well, that might have been worse I suppose.

The new purchaser may well be happier with visible repairs, when at least the work involved to improve them is visible to a proper luthier, rather than poorly-disguised cracks where the luthier will need to undo the cosmetic work before making a more invisible repair.

As someone who is passionate about vintage ukuleles, I just want to throw out there that I would much rather buy an un-reapaired instrument as opposed to a repaired one. If the cracks have been glued and are stable, they are likely best left alone. What would be the point in trying to fill them, or drop fill them? Is it to increase re-sale value? If that is your thought, then you may want to consider that guys like me would pay less for an instrument that has anything but amazingly well done repairs.

If you are planning on selling that uke do nothing to those cracks, anything you do will only lessen your price. When dealing with a true vintage instrument any alteration simply for cosmetics lessens value.

All good advice here!

Sometimes I find that the best "fill" for dents or cracks that don't quite come together is clear shellac drop fill...not some lame attempt at puttying. Other times the best is old-fashioned stick shellac...and that involves a learning curve.

Hiding dings and cracks is simply the most difficult aspect of lutherie of all the things we do. Sometimes it can take five times the amount of labor to hide or beautify a repair than even very careful structural work takes, and it's really easy to make a touched up area looks worse and worse every time you go near it.

Worst of all is trying to re-repair and hide bad repair work done with epoxy or Titebond (hah!) or even worse, silicon rubber caulk as was the attempt by someone for regluing the bridge on a Martin 00-18 that I have.

Philstix said:

If you are planning on selling that uke do nothing to those cracks, anything you do will only lessen your price. When dealing with a true vintage instrument any alteration simply for cosmetics lessens value.

Click to expand...

Add to that: some vintage Martins have such ludicrously thin tops it just makes it more impossible to do right.

Lots of good advice so far here. When it comes to restoration, you can get 90% there in 10% of the time, the last 10% of the learning curve takes a lifetime.

If you want perfect, invisible repairs, then even the best restoration luthier would need hours and big $ to do it right.

I suggest you leave it alone as long as there are no structural or playability issues. In the vintage instrument market, originality takes precedence over amateur repairs, every time. Your issues seem to be cosmetic and the hours and money it would take to get them back to perfect would probably not be worth it financially.

If you just want to do the repairs for fun, then go for it! I suggest reading all of frets.com repair blog as a starting point for this sort of work. Also, check out the Dan Erlwine shop videos from stew mac. You will see two masters of restoration at work.

Aaron

Fantastic answers.

Question: I have a vintage Martin 1 concert with one single crack on the upper bout on the back. It's about 3 inches long, not separated, goes with the grain. It does not go to any edge or to the binding/purfling. It is unrepaired, and does not affect the sound.

Properly humidified, will it continue to crack? Is repair mandated to stop its progression? Thanks.

I would never rely on humidity to keep a crack closed, and frankly, I'm not sure all the "humidify it" to get cracks to close advice is good if the instrument is just going to dry back out again. This calls for judicious use of...hot hide glue (there, I said it) and some small cleats to reinforce the repair.

okay, will do rick. thanks