A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

My neighbor handed me this to try to breath some life back into it. It is a Harmony Patrician. Has to be older than 1965 as no truss rod. This has been sitting in his father in laws house for ages. They sold the house and he doesn’t have desire or time to mess with it . The nut is a little busted up, there is a crack in the back. It is my intent to clean it, polish the frets, restring it and see if I might be able to seal the crack with some CA glue from the inside. I love these kinds of projects (have another old beast project to post at some point, but not as old as this. I know this is not a big $$ guitar, but I am excited to make it playable and resettable for him to use in his house however he sees fit (after hopefully spending a little time playing it). I would like any knowledge any of you can share as to cleaning up something like this. I did a little research on the guitar. Some info out there but nothing extensive and no serial numbers that I can find on these.
And now the important part...

Interesting project, show it some love & see what happens. Keep us posted.

Can't wait to see how that turns out!

The initial cleaning and deconstruction. The first is of a paper towel I used that was dampened just a tad to get offf the initial dirt. I had 5 that looked like this. And a bit of the cleaning...

Yup, there's a lot of satisfaction in throwing away grimy old strings and cleaning away the sludge. This guitar should have lots of character once done. But even if it ends up not playable, it'll make an awesome antique wall hanger.

So I put a few hours of elbow grease into the guitar this week. Scrubbed hardware, neck, headstock and body, used some cheapo compound on it as well and some guitar polish. I glued up the crack in the back. I restrung it today and I am pretty pleased with how it came out. I hope my buddy is too!

that came out great! good job!