(Broken) Pawn Shop Guitars, The Epiphone AJ-1-NA, Part 2

Here is Part 1 so you, the reader, can understand what I'm talking about.

(Broken) Pawn Shop Guitars, The Epiphone AJ-1-NA, Part 1

In Part 1 I had glued the headstock back onto the neck.  While the gluing process worked out fine, there was another problem.  When the headstock broke it blew out wood chips on the surface.  So I had to fill them in.  This is what the headstock looked like after being glued back together.

I used a Gibson lacquer pen to color in the black parts.  I then filled the crack with C.A. glue.  Normally I would use some sort of lacquer, but I wanted the glue to seal the exposed wood, not to mention fill the crack. 

In these two pictures I took steel wool to the glue to even it out.  Normally I would use sandpaper, but I didn't want to take a chance of going through the black overlay.  Basically I just smoothed it down until I could take it to the buffer.

The fretboard really needed cleaned up so I used the same steel wool on it.  It really cleaned it up nicely.  I also removed the grime from the frets so they ended up looking nice.  I used my straight edges to check the various frets.  They were in good shape.  After examining the frets I'm pretty sure someone has fret-dressed this guitar before.

One thing I didn't like was that the guitar seemed to have a weird film on it.  I believe it was tobacco film from a smoker.  I tried using my Ken Smith polish, but that stuff wasn't coming off. 

So here's what I decided to do.  I broke out the buffer with the coarsest grit I had.  As you can see I used it on the headstock.  It took out the scratches beautifully.  I used it on the front and the back, and I couldn't have asked for any better. 

I also buffed out the fretboard.  It really improved the look of wood as well as the frets.  I then buffed out the whole guitar to remove the weird film on it.  Normally when working with a buffer you add your buffing compound one time.  In trying to remove the weird film on this guitar I had to repeatedly add buffing compound. 

I have to say it worked great.  It took me longer than I thought it might, but I kept at it slow and steady.  I ended up buffing out some of the old scratches in the guitar so that was a bonus. 

My next move was to set up the guitar.  Since these guitars tend to sound a little bright, I strung it up with silk and steel strings.  Everything went pretty simply for me.  I put the tuners back on without any trouble.  I managed to turn the trust rod to where the neck was perfectly flat.  I oiled up the rosewood fretboard and bridge.  The only thing it really needed was for the nut slots to be cut correctly. 

Now that I have it tuned up and ready, it was time to take pictures of it for my sales posting.

Now that it's strung up, here is what the headstock looks like.

Right now, I am looking to trade it more than sell it.  No one is buying on Craigslist.  I've been seeing the same stuff on there for the last few months.  So I figure I can trade it better than I can sell it. 

The funny thing is once the strings stretched out this guitar sounded really good.  It surprised me just how well the bass came through.  I'm sure the silk and steel strings helped with that.  Whoever is interested in this guitar will really be happy once they play it.  I just hope they have something nice to trade for it.  We'll see.