Brazilian Rosewood Martin D-28 Restoration

First I'll start by saying that because I am a one woman repair shop and I stay so incredibly busy I normally pass on time intensive repairs like this one. You may also be aware of the fact that I can no longer spray lacquer due to my intense reactions to it and must sublet my finish work.  But alas this one got the best of me, it was forwarded to me from the Martin factory for repair as it was not the kind of repair they normally offer.

The pictures tell the story here. Years of abuse and poorly attempted unprofessional repair work had left this girl in poor structural and cosmetic shape (she was ugly to say the least). The top itself was beyond repair, it also had a 1/2" thick make shift bridge plate screwed to the top. The side crack was caused by a common practice actually...installing the input jack thru the side instead of the endblock. Once the side cracks from the stress of pushing and pulling on the input jack and cord people have been know to mount a plate over the original cracked hole and secure it in place in order to hold the jack...so we went from bad to worse there. The back had to two 1/2" holes near the center strip, missing purfling in the center strip and inside globes of epoxy held a washer, a guitar string and other material was stuck securely to the back. The fingerboard was severely damaged by a poor de-fretting or re-fretting technique and the heel of the neck had been sanded down.

Due to the amount of repair this instrument needed the owner made changes to the instruments original specs (so please don't email me with the old that's not original specs speech).

The top was replaced, the fingerboard was replaced, the large side hole was patched,  the back holes were patched, the center strip was replaced (using a slightly wider pattern), the instrument was rebound and a double laminate heel cap was used to "disguise" the smaller heel.