Pre-War Hensel Imperial Artist

These Hensel Guitars from the 1930’s are absolutely spectacular. This one too needed a lot of work. This is the before picture, and looks alright, but in the pictures that follow you can really see the defects.

The restoration notes on my blog have also been made into a 4 minute restoration video too. It can be found in my YouTube link here:

I received this guitar on a trade. It was unplayable and the previous owner needed a guitar that could be played.

This Hensel had obscenely high action, needing a neck reset. At some point in its life, someone had already sanded down the top of the bridge and was using a little piece of metal wire for a saddle. They had also notched the nut flush with the fingerboard and had a little piece of copper wire wedged in like a zero fret. Add to that three broken or missing braces and bent tuners, and it really was going to be a tricky restoration.

Bridge sanded down, no more saddle slot, piece of old coat hanger sitting flush on top of the bridge as a saddle.

Small piece of copper wire beside nut, keeping strings off fret board. Nut slots filed very deep, all the way flush to the fingerboard.

Wooden brace trying to hold the end of the neck up. Unfortunately the pressure bowed out the back and it cracked.

Back split where the wooden block was pushing outwards.

This brace is clearly not original, and it was broken and loose. You can also see the crack down the centre on the inside.

Step 1 of the restoration was to rehydrate the guitar to avoid any breakage due to brittleness when working on it. It spent a full week in my guitar humidor at about 85% humidity. The wood responded nicely and after the week, it was ready to work on.

You can see the bridge had been sanded (badly) and the saddle slot was barely an indentation. The slot had to be remade.

Taped everything off and used a thick blade from a reciprocating saw (by hand) to slowly restore the saddle slot. I don’t have a Dremel or fancy saddle jig. I just used modified hand tools and was patient (patience is not usually something I’m very good at).

Saddle slot restored. Bridge top sanded smooth again.

Reused an original Hensel rosewood saddle that I rescued from a previous Hensel project. The saddle was already pre-notched, and I just hope it will have enough height after the neck reset.

The wood had dried out and shrunk over the years and the sound hole binding had separated. After a week in the humidor the wood had largely rehydrated and the gap was small enough that I could clamp and glue the ring back in place.

Steamed neck joint and fretboard to remove the neck. Again, I don’t have a fancy neck removal jig, so I built my own. A sturdy table edge, a small block for under the neck heel, and a couple of clamps to provide downward pressure on the guitar body when the glue is loosened. (Only one clamp in the photo, to give a good side view, but two clamps required for even pressure).

Lots of time and patience, but it eventually worked free. Steam and jiggle, steam and jiggle, repeat until free.

Sanded a fraction of a mm from both sides of the neck heel, reinstalled neck with hide glue, clamped and waited.

One side of the neck heel has a hair of a gap just at the edge of the seam, but it sits tight and is rock solid now. And perfectly straight in line with the centre line of the guitar.

Inside the guitar I tackled the cracks and broken braces. I put a thin strap of mahogany over the crack and glued it up. In the next picture will show that I also used a solid block of flat maple clamped to the underside of the guitar body to make sure the back was dead flat. It had quite a bow in it from that wooden post it came with. incidentally, this screw post from StewMac is one of the pieces of luthier tools I probably couldn’t do without.

You can see the maple block providing support for the underside. The weight I have taped in place is helping to clamp the mahogany strap in place, through the sound hole.

Mahogany strap in place. Now rebuilding the brace on the bottom.

Shimmed the rosewood nut to get the strings up off the fretboard

The saddle was too low after the neck reset. I shimmed it with Honduran rosewood. I wanted to keep this saddle if pool. I can always switch it out for bone later.

String height 3 mm at fret 12. Not bad.