1967 Gibson Firebird I Non-Reverse

Well it's only been a year since my last post, better than four years I guess, but the workbench has been quite full. This '67 Firebird is going to be the first installment in my "Used Cars" series. It came in badly broken down and in need of serious repair. 

The good news was that the seller's description stated that the "headstock was in hand."

The two pieces kind of fit together, but the crack in the headstock had been broken and repaired so many times; and was completely full of epoxy and filler, that the headstock was not straight or level.

It also looks like the guitar had been refinished about five times, so the first thing I had to do was get everything back down to bare wood to see what I was dealing with.

The guitar had deep scars on the front and back from previously being stripped with a circular grinding wheel. The front even shows they didn't have time to remove the pickguard so they just stripped around it. The control cavity had the least amount of tampering and it looks like the original colour of the guitar was Frost Blue.

The break goes straight through the serial number and only the first two digits ("00") remain completely visible which puts this one to 1967. 

Gluing the headstock back together was a real clampfest, but there was a lot of surface area to work with and I managed to get everything straight. 

Note the angled clamp on the tapered dowel going through the A String tuner hole. This increases the downward clamping pressure on the surface area of the break.
                                                                                          

Here's the headstock all glued back together and nicely levelled, but there were still several gaps from missing wood that needed to be addressed. So I had to do some surgery and a transplant.

I also added a mahogany veneer to each side of the headstock which required an even bigger and better clampfest than the first one. 

I had to sand for days to get rid of all those circular disc marks and bring the body back into respectable shape.

Now to add some colour. I'm going with the original Frost Blue.

I gave the guitar a lightly aged finish, but left the control cavity as it was to show the original Frost Blue peeking through. Pickups are a matched set of Ernie Ball MM90's that came out of a Music Man Albert Lee model.

1967 Firebird back on the road again.

Now all I needed was something to keep it in. Stay tuned for the resto on the case I found on my neighbours front lawn destined for the trash.