A couple of Martin instruments to repair...

I don’t actually advertise for repair work. If I did, I would likely be flooded. It would be a steady revenue source, but one I am not really interested in right now. Just from word of mouth and fixing up cool things I find, I usually do about one a month as it is. At the Centrum Ukulele Festival last week, I brought home two instruments to repair. I thought you would like to see them and hear my thought process. Hopefully I can update you later as they progress.

First up is Piper’s Martin soprano ukulele.

As you can see, the sides are badly cracked. But before we get into that, here is some info on this Martin. It is a style 2, made of all Mahogany except for the Rosewood fretboard. The Martin ukuleles have no serial numbers, so you have to date it by the features. It has bar frets, a decal on the headstock and no stamp on the back of the headstock. This means it was made between 1934-1946. My main source for any Martin ukulele research is the book The Martin Ukulele: The Little Instrument That Helped Create A Guitar Giant" by Tom Walsh and John King. John passed away several years ago, but Tom is still around and has been very helpful to me in my research into the ukulele.

I have worked on the uke before, replacing the friction pegs with geared tuners and adding strap buttons. I am not a purist, so I don’t feel bad about altering a Martin like this, especially when it is someone’s daily player. According to the book, Martin made about 10,000 style 2 ukes between 1934-46, so it’s not like this is a rare, priceless artifact. If you had a Ford from 1936, wouldn’t you add modern tires and seatbelts?

The damage happened when Piper dropped the uke. It hit the strap button, cracking the sides all around. No wood was lost, so the cracks should line up pretty well. I will use hide glue for the repair, likely adding a few small cleats inside to hold the sides together. I will aim for good alignment, but if a little bit of the sides do not fully align, we do not plan on scraping, sanding and refinishing the sides to make them “perfect.”