i thought some of y'all might enjoy following the progress of not one but TWO projects involving guitars from East and West Germany respectively. The first is the Musima Deluxe 25V which i bought from OndrakGuy in the b/s/t, and the other is a Hopf Twisty which i'm going to marry to an early Hondo neck.
so, to the Musima, which i've had for a few weeks now but only got into working with seriously in the last few days. you've seen the photo of it in original condition as it came from Lithuania, where it first appears on the internet.
what isn't apparent in the photos is that the entire guitar appears to have been refinished after being stripped by some tovarisch with a wire brush and a rotary drill. this is particularly awful on the fretboard, where the chosen approach to getting rid of fretboard ruts was to scarify the surface as if it were the scourged body of Christ. seriously.
i eventually wound up having to go at the fingerboard with a file at first to get rid of scalloping between the frets, and then sanding with successive grits of sandpaper from 220 up to 1500. the results are pretty decent, i think:
after i finish the fingerboard, it's on to sanding the neck.