my complete guitar restoration (July-2019)

[kkmm]

In order to practice my guitar restoration skills, I bought a "junk" guitar for 10$, completely not playable with numerous problems, and spend hours & hours to restore it.
My goal: excellent cosmetic condition and excellent playing condition.
Sound quality is what the woods on guitar produces (not so good even brand new as it is a cheap Chinese made model). I may effect sound quality due to sanding the guitar all around.

Here is the guitar as I got it:


- - - Updated - - -

Current problems:
1. dings and scratches all around
2. neck angle issue causing high action
3. wrong nut size (smaller than the nut slot width
4. fretboard partially loose, and mis-aligned with the neck, can feel by hand
5. wrong tuning pegs for nylon string guitar (but head stock is slotted as all other classical guitars)
6. wrong bridge, shaped and has pins for steel strings. This is not a problem itself, I will leave it alone as there is no cosmetic issue here. I can use ball end nylon strings on this guitar.

[kkmm]

1. sand the back to barewood, removing all dings and scratches

2. remove the neck extension from the body. Not to hard, within 10 mins, it's done
3. detach the neck joint, I used a thin dull knife, heated and slowly slide between neck joint and body. The knive goes in half way then gets blocked (from either side). So I know part of the neck goes in the body (like a dove tail for example). So I take a japanese flush blade to cut off and the neck got out. Indeed, part of the neck in in side the body. I know this is not the proper way but for this project, it is the fastest way.

4. cut binding channel on the body and glue in the bindings, then hand sand all around so the bindings are flush to the surface

[Hudmister]

The tuners and bridge are not wrong for the guitar. That Jubilee is a slotted head, steel string guitar by design I believe, not a classical. It may benefit from a change to nylon strings due to less tension but installing classical tuners will be a challenge.

[kkmm]

Now that everything is clear. I hope experts can help me in the next steps

1) sand the top only the red and back part to remove bad cosmetic, the center part looks good.
Then redo the sunburst finish (with what, and how ??? I don't know yet)
Please help as this is my weakest skills (lack of skill is more accurate)
2) apply finish to the back (dark brown in center, black all around ???)

I will not attach the neck to the body until these two steps are done.

[kkmm]

That Jubilee is a slotted head, steel string guitar by design I believe, not a classical.

I think this is correct. The guitar came to me with nylon strings.
Anyway, I remove the tuners, drill holes larger to fit classical guitar tuners, remove the bridge, glue on a classical guitar bridge.

The bridge is carefully placed to ensure proper intonation.

About finishing: as I mention at the beginning, I am really bad on this. However, going thru this exercise, I learned that the wood has to be sealed with some sort of sealer before applying the finish. I did not seal the top so the finish gives ungly looking dark spots all over the places (LESSON LEARNED, NEVER FORGET THIS AGAIN, I will practice on a dozen pieces of various wood to master this skill)
I use a scraper to get off most of that ugly things, then seal and re-apply the finish again. This time, the scrape traces gave an unusual pattern which is not bad to look at (still bad though).
The back appears to be OK, although there are some spots that are lighter than the rest (no pre seal either)

I am now ready to attach the neck to the body, awaiting only the tuners hardware.

[kkmm]

I learned many things so far: removing the neck (first time) , remove bridge fairly quickly (done this numerous time before but slowly), install bindings (quite time consuming task), scraping off finish !!!
These are boring stuff for pro but for me, quite interesting to learn.