Cleaning up eBay purchase

[uatru]

Helps and advice needed please! I recently bought an old harmony on eBay. It has what looks like a painted top, and although showing its age it seems structurally ok, and should clean up nicely. It needs new tuners, so I'm going to order them from Stewmac. The serial number starts with 43, so I'm guessing that's when it was made.

It needs a good clean up, which leads me to the question: what is the best thing to use? I have some beeswax polish, but that isn't a cleaner as such. Would things like pledge work? Or I recall years ago we bought an old bed that needed work, and my mother in law suggested a mix of methylated spirit and linseed oil which worked really well.

Can I ask for the benefit of your experience please?

All the best
Andrew

[slide496]

I don't know how old it is - I have two painted ones - a silvertone from the 60's and a supertone from the 30's. The finish can be really fragile and thinned down.

I used either Stewart McDonald's Preservation Polish which is a restorative and cleaning product, or the product from the Gibson "Vintage Reissue Guitar Restoration Kit".

You might look into whether those products would be right for you. There is no guarantee that they will work on your guitar, though, so I would test it on the back first - the finish has lasted pretty well with the use of them on mine.

I wouldn't use pledge personally or anything that wasn't recommended for a guitar like that.

Maybe other forum members have suggestions as well.

Best,
Harriet

[kiwi]

Naphtha (lighter fluid) is great for cleaning nitro finishes, I have many old Harmonys and use that as a cleaner. For polishing I use Mothers carnauba wax. Avoid anything with silicon in it.

The serial number in Harmonys is merely a parts number no real rhyme or reason for them, suspected just to keep parts together it should read XXXXHXXX, the part after the H being the model number. There should be (but not always) a second stamp F or SXX that is the date stamp the XX being last 2 digits of the year of manufacture.

[uatru]

Thanks for the advice. I'll have a very careful go at cleaning it. Andrew

[maui_chimes]

Start with a dry, soft cotton cloth. Brush off any dry and caked on dirt. Then go to a slightly damp soft cotton cloth, followed by a dry cloth to buff off the moisture. Naphtha on a soft cotton cloth can remove some material that water doesn't, but will take a lot of work.

If that doesn't work, Virtuoso cleaner is very effective but takes a good bit of work. I would avoid any polishes or waxes. You want it clean, not shiny.

[tomkatb]

Be careful.

The other day I was at the home of Frank Harlow. A well known resonator maker.

He saw a scratch on my new guitar. He showed me his trick. A bottle of Mcguire's #9 polish. A quick rub and the scratch disappeared. It is an automotive fairly aggressive polish. Swirl remover.

Then followed up with guitar wax.

The finish was the old cellulose nitril ? I think.

Be careful. Aggressive.

[slide496]

I just wanted to add that when I worked on my painted parlors if they dulled down during the cleaning/sanitizing process either the stewart mac or the gibson product -one or the other- was restorative to the shine.

Stewmac also sells easy to use colored lacquer pens and I used those to tone down to chips on the painted headstock with a coat of clear gloss from the pen and also their fretboard dye to freshen the look of the fretboard, but the latter is very thin -and seems to have a life of its own - so I had to wear gloves and put down plastic, use masks etc.

Harriet

[Deleted]

I wonder if I might ask (and I guess it depends on what paint it is) how possible it is to get paint off a vintage dobro, and whether the original finish might still be rescued (if its there)?
Cheers
TT