BEFORE ...

...This a beautiful old lady who's suffered gross indignities at the hands of an enthusiastic clueless cowboy.

This little guitar was built by Anton Bauer from Linz in Austria in the 1890's - it's a little masterpiece!

The clueless cowboy took a heavy-handed disc-sander to the table. Then he varnished it with something he found in his garden shed. After that, he slathered a "Pattex" type contact glue into the cracks (see the pale stripes) & tried to re-glue the bridge on to the sh*t varnish with tons more Pattex.

Pattex is great for some things, but anathema for guitar repairers - happily it dissolves with an aggressive paint stripper.

The last thing the idiot cowboy did was to put steel strings on a guitar designed for gut strings - result!

She'll be OK...

After