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Here is a close up of the screws installed at their slight angles; ....and screwed down just to the point that one edge touches the pickguard, lest any more pressure crack the pickguard.  The slight bending distortion that the pickguard used to have with the original screws tight in their holes and pulled inward by the shrinking pickguard, ....no longer exists to any appreciable degree with the screws just touching the pickguard and holding the pickguard just fine.

As is common with old broad pickguards, the rear screw shown below just barely caught the wood in the edge of the electronics cavity routing;  And the inward shrinking of the pickguard casued that screw to collapse it's very thin screw hole wall on the routed cavity side.  The collapsed screw hole can be seen in the first picture on Work Page 2 and the next picture after the one below.  The screw is holding the wood lightly.  So a decision might be made to remove the pickguard, glue a round toothpick dowel into that hole, and when it dries overnight break it off flush, tap it in slightly and with a small nail tap a starter pilot hole at the correct leaning angle shown in the above pics.  There is not enough of the original hole to secure by simply inserting a piece of flat toothpick as holes are commonly refreshed by.
~ Reassembly; Pickguard / Electronics; Vibrato ~
Work page 5 of 5
1966 Harmony Special Addition Silhouette
Silvertone  model 1488.

~ Inspections, work, Info and Progress Pages ~
Some pickguards of this guitar's vintage were made out of acetate plastic, particularly faux tortous-shell pickguards like this one.  Acetate plastic would shrink and distort with age;  Some other plastics would also.  This pickguard looks like it is a 4 ply laminate ....2 plies of white sandwiching 1 ply of black and topped with a ply of acetate "tortoise shell".  As most plastics age, they shrink.  In the case of most old pickguards they pull their screwheads inward which causes the screws to deform their screw holes in the guitar's wood outward.  If a person attempts to reinstall an old pickguard and drives the screws straight in, it will create new holes in the guitar wood just inside the old holes, and will often be so close that it collapses one wood hole into the other.  If the guitar is not of particular value or quality condition, then the fix is to fill the old holes with round toothpicks glued in and tap new hole starters for the screws with a small nail, which line up straight with the shrunken pickguard screw holes.  BUT, when assembling an old guitar of this one's exceptional quality, it's best to find the angle of the tilted holes and put the screws back at that angle but not tightened down hard enough to distort or crack the pickguard.  Here you can see how I use half of round toothpicks to position the pickguard to line up all the holes and show me the angles of that match.  I leave it up to the new owner if he / she deisres to fill the old holes and make new ones that the screws will be vertical in.
Here's another camera angle to see how the holes line up for future reference.  Makes it allot easier than having to fish for them to insert the visual toothpicks like I had to.
Here is a close up of the screws installed at their slight angles; ....and screwed down just to the point that one edge touches the pickguard, lest any more pressure crack the pickguard.  The slight bending distortion that the pickguard used to have with the original screws tight in their holes and pulled inward by the shrinking pickguard, ....no longer exists to any appreciable degree with the screws just touching the pickguard and holding the pickguard just fine.

As is common with old broad pickguards, the rear screw shown below just barely caught the wood in the edge of the electronics cavity routing;  And the inward shrinking of the pickguard casued that screw to collapse it's very thin screw hole wall on the routed cavity side.  The collapsed screw hole can be seen in the first picture on Work Page 2 and the next picture after the one below.  The screw is holding the wood lightly.  So a decision might be made to remove the pickguard, glue a round toothpick dowel into that hole, and when it dries overnight break it off flush, tap it in slightly and with a small nail tap a starter pilot hole at the correct leaning angle shown in the above pics.  There is not enough of the original hole to secure by simply inserting a piece of flat toothpick as holes are commonly refreshed by.
V
Here is a great shot of the factory spray on polish that ran down into the vibrato spring cavity while the polish was still liquid and not yet dried for buffing.  The dark marks are hand sweat from Playing that ran under the vibrato base plate and discolored the polish's wax.  None of this origninal patina was removed from the guitar.  Every light mark is again factory polish residue.
V
Virtually all of the beige discolorations on the red paint in the cavities and around screw holes is either factory polish or factory sawdust.
Here is the vibrato assembly initially installed.  The wood wedges between the base plate and the top assembly are to lift and hold the top piece from the spring down-pressure, to give access to the base plate mounting screws / holes and to hold the 2 vibrato rocking pieces tight while installing.  See it better in the next picture below this one.
The Patient is in excellent health and doing well.
After a long day on the operating table, .....the Patient is sleeping and dreaming about being in tip-top excellent shape again and being played again after obviously being silent in a dark case for many many years.  About all that's left is changing out the non-original tuner screw, intalling the bridge in a temporaray position, lemon oiling the fretboard, stringing her up, setting intonation and marking the intoned bridge position, doing a full assembled ops check, loosening the strings, setting and lemon oiling the bridge.  Then it's packing time.  A reasonably updated list of work is on the Work List page, usually updated within 3 days of it's work done. ~~~~~~~  And when she's done her new Sugar Daddy will know every detail about her without having to take years to find / discover same.

The white streaks on the red finish are reflections of the camera flash on the vibrato assembly.
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