Renovating my requinto

[Tony Done]

Just over 20 years ago while living in Colombia I bought a locally-made requinto. When I returned to Oz I left the guitar in the keeping of my brother-in-law, where it went virtually unplayed. In a nostalgia hit, I brought it back home with me from holidays at Christmas. Just about every board used in its construction split in the dry climate of my workshop, some in several places, and most of the body joints also sprung. Additionally, the neck developed a very low angle giving way too much action height.

I decided to get it into good working order, but not worry too much about cosmetics, so I stripped all the finish, glued up all the joints and splits, treated the whole thing with a few coats of tung oil, and reset the neck.

The back, sides, fretboard and bridge are some kind of attractive-looking local hardwood (any guesses?) but the top looks like six strips taken from a packing case, with a little sliver of cedar thrown in for good measure at the edge of the lower treble bout. All originally made invisble by a coat of dark orange transparent lacqer. The pic of the heel shows a few dodgy bits, like white filler, a split caused by a nail and runout on the binding. Not bad at all by Colombian standards.

The neck reset might interest some. Since there is no truss rod, I just sawed a wedge out of the heel, screwed it back to the correct angle with a temporary screw and filled the gap with slow setting epoxy and wood shims. I then tidied the whole thing up by making a channel and bogging it with epoxy mixed with black tempera powder paint. I also used the filler to make a heel cap. The channel is wider than need be because I bodged the neck angle the first time and had to redo it.

I have a high (aluminium!) saddle and action height is about 2.3mm (just under 1/10") at the body fret. The tone is pretty good, the reason I bought it in the first place, and since I'm using standard guitar strings, I have it tuned to G, standard intervals.







Just in case the images don't work, here are the links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/done_family/10752373793/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/done_family/10752120686/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/done_family/10752303583/

[Special B]

Beautiful pieces of wood (sorry, I can't help you with the name). I especially like the fretboard.

Good work.

[Tony Done]

Originally Posted by Special B

Beautiful pieces of wood (sorry, I can't help you with the name). I especially like the fretboard.

Good work.

Thanks. The timber might be something like Aniba rosaeodora, though I can't recall much smell when I bought it.

This is more appropriate to biulding and repair, but I've used that epoxy/tempera mix before. It works well because it acts as both a tough non-shrinking filler and a strong glue. I did a bit of research, and you can still buy powder paints. I might get some in different colours for timber matching instead of just faux ebony.