Restoration of a Hermanos Sentchordi's guitar, s. XIX

Curious specimen produced by the Sentchordi brothers, who worked in their workshop on the street Bolsería de Valencia active from 1861 to 1905, and who inherited the workshop of his father, Manuel Sentchordi, who began working on 1720. Although models were consulted builder with a higher degree of perfection, yet there is no doubt that it is an exemplary instrument of the Valencian guitar factory of that period.

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The instrument arrived very damaged: it only had two metal strings, two pins were missing, the cover was loose along a large part of its perimeter, pieces of the profile were missing, the bottom had four slits, two of them completely open, one oak capo carved with razor, attack of xylophages on the shovel, the varnish cracked in several areas and a lot of dust.

I began to clean the dust with a broach and I discovered details that encouraged me to follow. The materials were of first quality. Both the rings and the background were of a holy wood of Brazil of undoubted beauty.

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The lid was made of three pieces of German spruce and had only two bars, one over the mouth and the other under it. I examined the interior and discovered two simple strips of paper that reinforced the joints.

Another detail that amazed me was the incrustation of the rosette. What looked like oxidized brass, after the proper treatment turned out to be alpaca. A beautiful floral motif trimmed in alpaca and embedded in the

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jacaranda disk, material from which the shovel was also made. This one had cypress strips emptied by an insect, which I had no choice but to exchange for new ones.

After repairing the separations, cracks and other structural problems of the instrument, the time came for the varnish. I buffed the old one and varnished it again with rubber-lacquer.

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I left a fine enough finish to protect the surface but without losing the feeling of "seeing the wood". I made a new bone capo, and allowed myself the license to carve it according to the style of some artisans of the time.