Neck

The neck needed cleaning and degreasing. Given it's age the coating was probably shellac. Ever wondered what shellac is? Me neither. But I'll tell you anyway. As well being the name of Steve Albini's band it's a resin secreted by a female scale insect that uses it to make tunnels on the outside of trees. It's collected and dissolved in alcohol. When applied the alcohol evaporates off leaving a layer of resin. Obviously as it's alcohol soluble cleaning the neck with methylated spirit wasn't going to work. A little Googling told me that Naphtha can be used to degrease and clean instrument necks and won't affect the shellac. Naphtha is lighter fluid to you and me.

I removed the tuning machines and sat them in a little bath of naphtha to loosen any grease in the cogs although they seemed pretty smooth anyway and loosen the dirt and grease on the buttons.

My aim wasn't to get them looking like new as I want to retain the aged look of the instrument. On modern tuning pegs the buttons (round bits on the ends) are usually made from plastic but this instrument was made long before Bakelite was invented so I think they're most likely made from bone like the nut -there's a surprising amount of dead animal in banjo type instruments, the vellum is a piece of calf skin and back in the day unless the strings were wire back then they were made from gut. The tuning machines where cleaned up with an old toothbrush, cotton wool and more naphtha.

To clean the neck I lightly rubbed it down with naphtha and wire wool. I did the same for the fretboard too. The nut (the white bit at the top of the fretboard) has been treated with shellac too. I'm pretty it wasn't originally finished like that and it must affect the tone of the instrument. It probably says a lot for the durability of shellac that the wire strings hadn't cleared it from the grooves. There were some shiny areas of shellac on the fretboard too. Looks like someone was a bit heavy handed with the stuff at some point in the past.

You can apply shellac with a brush or more carefully by making a 'rubber' - a ball of cotton wool with shellac poured onto it which is placed in a lint free cloth. You then rub the wood with it leaving a thin layer of the resin behind repeating the process to build up layers. Just to make life complicated I opted to use a rubber. I applied it to the neck and headstock avoiding the nut and the flat surface of the fretboard. I gave it four coats in total and  gave it a light sanding between each. There were couple of areas I'd applied it too thickly to but I just used methylated spirit on a cotton bud to remove it and reapplied it. When I was done I gave it a final light sanding with 2000 grit paper.

I used more methylated spirit, cotton buds and a toothbrush to clean up the nut. The fretboard I cleaned with with meths and cottonwool buds before giving it a couple of squirts of Dunlop Fretboard 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil and rubbing it in with cotton wool. Comparing the fretboard with another instrument I'm pretty sure it's probably rosewood.