John Preston English guittar Restoration
2024
Another beautiful Preston English guitar is in the workshop for restoration to playing condition. The owners wish to keep the guittar and and play it. John Preston was active in London 1734 to 1779 The body and neck are beautiful figured sycamore covered in a lovely red/brown varnish.The fingerboard is a thin ebony veneer The soundboard a is Spruce or pine. The instrument shows signs of use and wear commensurate with its age of almost 250 years, but is still in very good condition.
The guittar as it arrived in late 2023.
Showing the unusually shaped head with the tuning mechanism, the makers stamp and the pressed metal rose which is typical of many English guittars
The clever fine tuning mechanism was invented to overcome the great difficulty of tuning short metal strings at low tension. It uses a threaded metal rod running through a movable brass block that has a string holder attached. As the threaded rod is turned with a watch key, the block slowly moves along the threaded rod allowing very fine tuning.
A number 2 watch key. The one used on this guittar. They were once common for winding pocket watches.
However, in this case, one of the string holders was broken. The string holder was made of Brass sheet about 1mm thick. The string holder is soldered to the brass block which moves along the threaded rod. I created a new string holder and took it to a local jeweller who used silver solder to attach ithe string holder to the movable block.
The neck was bent on this guittar. I used an infrared lamp to heat the wood of the neck until it was soft a then clamp edit in a straightened position until cool. It is always a risky business as the temperature needed to soften the wood is nearly enough to soften the varnish. this procedure was never completely successful on this guittar. Fortunately the tension of the strings also tends to straighten the neck
There were many reasons to remove the back. Access was needed to repair and re-glue bars and ribs. Also, The guittar has suffered from a woodworm infestation. and I needed to treat the inside of the guittar as well as the outside. I used a water based woodworm treatment as it does not darken the wood and is odourless. Looking inside it was obvious, that the back had been previously removed. Diagonal patches reinforced an old soundboard repair . And It appears that the screw holding the neck to the front block had been removed and and replaced by a new screw in a different location
Also the pressed metal rose had been severely pushed in and this was easy to repair from the inside
Two views of the inside of the guitar showing the position of the bars.
There was work to be done inside the guittar, several bars were broken and some had come loose from the soundboard. I used animal Hide glue from Beare & son LTD. for all wooden repairs. Various methods of clamping were used including modified cloths pegs for the ends of the bars.
The repaired back with my label ready to be replaced. With the woodwork completed I used a mock bridge of sycamore to ascertain the correct height for the wire strings.
Knowing the correct height of the strings, I made a bridge from ebony with a cow bone cap. When I restored another Preston(Purchased during WWII) in 2007, there were remnants of strings attached to the instrument,
Below are the diameters of those strings. I used these diameters to create strings for this English Guittar I used ordinary loop end steel string guitar strings
- First Course 2x 0.008
- Second Course 2x 0.010
- Third course 2x 0.012
- Fourth course 2x 0.014
- Fifth course 1x 0.018 wound
- Sixth course 1x0.020 wound
The Finished guittar ready to be returned to its owner. June 2024. It has a lovely bright and cheerful tone, a good contrast to many other instruments of the period.