1930s Unmarked Portugese Guitar

I've worked on a lot of Portuguese guitarras, but this is the first one I've had in a while. A local customer's grandfather (from Portugal) owned this and played it all the time. The subsequent generations never got the hang of it and it remained a wall-hanger for decades, it seems.

The owner came in to have the headstock re-repaired (these almost always break after a while) and a replacement tuner post fit. I did more, though, because I feel honor-bound to keep these instruments in service. They're somewhat rare over here and have a gorgeous sound. The condition of this guy (clean, with a good neck angle, and well-built if folksy) made the work a lot easier than it often is.

If you know these instruments, then you know how hard it can be to source tuners. I wound-up making a new shaft from a broken violin bow's frog adjuster and a soldered-on gear from an old tuner. It works just fine. The rest of the work was fussy setup stuff -- I had to pull-up and reseat all the frets so I could then level/dress them, added side dots, fit and compensated the bridge, and then laboriously restrung the instrument and set it up. It plays beautifully, now, with low 1/16" action overall at the 12th fret.

Traditional Portuguese tuning is modal D or C but I've restrung this with a set comparable to 12-string lights (46w-10) and tuned it up like a guitar with a capo on the 3rd fret -- "terz" tuning. This makes it immediately accessible to the owners and I'm hoping that it means it will get some good use going forward.

Materials are interesting -- it has a flatsawn pine top (as many of these do), fancy rope purfling and binding, mahogany sides, and a ply-something back. The neck is something unknown to me but it's quite sturdy under tension despite being sort of fragile when bumped (a bit like mahogany, that).