The Silvertone Acoustic, H621 pt. 2 Bridge Repair and Cleaning

The Silvertone Acoustic, Pt. 2

Since I have both a sweatshirt on and a beard, I'm guessing that I made the above video back in January (Actually, I checked the date when I was re-upping the video. It was December). Again, the point was how good the guitar actually sounded without me having done anything to it beyond buying a guitar case. 

So now it's time to talk about repairs. First, the bridge was in the most need of help. I actually bought another to replace it, and started to sand it down to fit. Then I read something about someone who had a Harmoney with a bridge like mine, and they just glued the bridge back together again. Since I was having trouble getting the new bridge thin enough, I decided to just go that route.

The bridge was both screwed (one of the possible reasons it was broken. The screws and the holes for the pins all line up in a row) down and lightly glued. Using a paint scraper and a razor, it came off pretty easy. Looking at and playing with the tuning machines, I decided to just leave them for the time being, even though the tuner for the D string is bent.

After popping the bridge off, I scraped it clean of all the old glue and residue. Then I gave the guitar a good cleaning, using some wood oil and Murphy's Wood Cleaner. As it says all over the internet, when you are repairing or replacing the bridge, you need to scrape all the old glue and residue off, so using a razor and very fine sandpaper, I scraped off the old glue on the guitar. There wasn't much, so that turned out to be easier than I expected. 

After the sanding I gave the guitar a good cleaning both inside and out. It cleaned up really well. Once I had it all apart, I glued the bridge back together using the same Titebond I used in some of the ukulele repairs that are here in the blog. I clamped the bridge together using a bunch of Harbor Freight clamps, and it actually held up. It needed paint though, which I'll talk about in the next post.