Muskoka Guitars

Muskoka Guitars Dave Cureton has been building guitars harps and other acoustic instruments since 1986. Check his site at www.muskokaguitars.com for more information

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My sister-in-law brought out her uke last night , not staying tune a bit of a worn bridge .string stretching session and...
10/13/2025

My sister-in-law brought out her uke last night , not staying tune a bit of a worn bridge .string stretching session and a adjustment of the original Grover barrel tuners solved that problem and it stayed in tune easily overnight and into the morning when we started playing it again. Apart from the worn bridge it’s pretty minty for a hundred years old . We dated it to the late 1920s thru the tuners, logo and binding being consistent with a description. Easily playable with light action NFS.

07/20/2025

Hey everybody
So I ran out of couloured veneers in the shop ( well almost the good coulours like green and red are almost gone ) so it’s off to the dye this weekend with a snack pack of Jacquard basic dyes a jug of vinegar and a measuring cup
Chopped up an 96”x12” sheet of veneer into halves and quarters then into the presoak , brought the4.5 litres dyepot water to 180 degrees tossed in a half a cup of vinegar and 9.5 grams of dye and immersed the pre soaked wood stirring frequently but ultimately let it sit overnight. Coupke of light spots this morning but they coloured after an hour of individual soaking .
I’ll push it a bit today w the green .
According to my dye guru , Hannah Lin the vinegar or ns the pores of the material allowing the dye to pe*****te and also acts as a mordant making it more colour fast
So hers a bunch of red head guitar veneers and about 40 6-7 mm strips for binding and rosettes twisting in the wind .
Ill probably size them with shellac of glue wash and iron them flat . Makes the strips more controllable
I did poke a little scrap into the hot dyepot and it pe*****ted 100% pretty immediately so we’ll see how this goes w green .
Bacatcha
David
PS that’s a corner of my hand powered timber hauler at the bottom and the little test. Scrap . Nerdy I know 😀
No AI was invited to write here just me!

07/18/2025

I post this one for not just its punk / post punk vibe but also for the Kay ET 200 guitar .. dude is rocking in the corner and the crazy sax dancer . Also cos I like it and recently fixed up a similar Kay for Hannah Bna herself a post punk something something else . :)

https://fb.watch/AW3wtIIACd/?fs=e

05/07/2025
05/01/2025

Hi everybody Here's a little more on the Ramirez repair what the actual side ended up looking like . Cheers David

Here's a little project completed . Its a mid to late 70s Ramírez classical guitar . Ramirez is quite and old family fir...
05/01/2025

Here's a little project completed . Its a mid to late 70s Ramírez classical guitar . Ramirez is quite and old family firm located in Madrid, I think in its fourth or fifth generation of builders . This is astudent model made from red cedar and African mahoghany trimmed with ebony ( back when you could get good ebony )
The Ramirez firm was one of the first to extensively use Canadian red cedar as a soundboard esp on nylon strung guitars . Now of course it's quite common in both nylon and steelstring guitars

You can see the process more or less in this sequence
The side is shattered with multiple cracks .
Its fit back together with glue masking tape and some pretty crazy clamp setups .
The flapping piece in the first pic was quite concerning . Indicating quite a bit of tension in these very thin sides , about a millimetre thick. I hassling this bit in the second pic .
I made these clamps from a junk set of tuners. They act as a windlass . I drill a 1/16" hole in the side and poke some fishing line through threaded on a fine sewing needle. Fished it out with a magnet .
Threaded a cleat , glue and caul onto the the line and pulled it up tight by hand and then cranked the tuner windlass to hold it in shape .
When the glue was dry , I snipped the fishline and pulled it out .
Retrofitted a couple of side liners just to beef things up a bit . The whole is filled and the finish repaired. Pretty close to invisible . Gingerly tuned it up and 13 cleats took the string tension.

05/01/2025

I look over this project here detailing the damage .

04/21/2025

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1110 Barkway Road Gravenhurst
Muskoka, ON

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+17053948985

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