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I searched through some forums on the topic, and I was able to find a bunch of ideas about how maybe an old warped celluloid tort pickguard could be flattened out, but not much information on how a pickguard actually was straightened out using the different guesses.

Here's what worked for me. Obviously, not all 50-year-old pickguards are the same, and you should open a window in your kitchen. ...and keep a fire extinguisher handy just in case, but this worked for me - simple, cheap, effective.

First, some "before" shots - these were from the listing showing the state of the pickguard when the guitar was purchased. ...the pickguard doesn't show very well, but you can tell from the edges that it was pretty wavy, (sorry I didn't take any better pictures of the guard before I started - hopefully these will give you an idea of the waviness that was present. ...and the nasty crack in the body is also penciled in for a repair attempt soon!)




I saw several references to pressing a pickguard between tempered glass and leaving it in the sun/under a lightbulb/in an oven. ...but since I don't have any tempered glass, I figured that I'd take two pieces of 3/4" thick MDF that were slightly larger than the pickguard and use those to make a clamp, since the material is smooth, cheap, and can be drilled easily.

First I traced the warped guard onto one of the pieces of MDF, and then I stuck my two pickguard-sized pieces together with double-stick tape. Next, I drilled all of the holes so that some 1-1/2" screws could be screwed into the boards. Then I separated the two boards and drilled one of them with a larger drill bit so that the screws would slide right through the first board and thread into the second one. I figured this would make a secure clamp, and keep the pickguard from shrinking. ...just in case.

After I drilled the holes, I sanded the boards lightly to flatten any areas that popped up when drilling, and then carefully aligned the pickguard with the screw holes in the boards and tightened the screws to clamp the sandwich together.

Then, I heated the oven to 210 degrees and put the MDF/pickguard sandwich in the oven for an hour. After the hour was up, I removed the contraption from the oven and set it aside to cool for a while ...about 2-3 hours

I'm very happy with how it turned out! Here are some pictures of the setup and my results:

Very informative! looks like a really effective method lets hear more about the guitar next!

fakefurcoat wrote:Very informative! looks like a really effective method lets hear more about the guitar next!

I think I'll start a restoration thread soon, but I figured that this info would be helpful to folks with warped pickguards.

I was a bit too psyched when I popped apart the clamp and saw the results to hide this in a thread.

That is amazing!!!

sweet!! nicely done. Might have come back to this post later. thanks!!

Nicely done! I am sure many will find your method useful for flattening old pickguards.

Nice job!

I'm looking forward to your restoration thread!

Thanks for the post! Might have to try this with my '63 tort guard.

Here's some relevant info from an old-timey (1917) research report on celluloid:

"We have not been able to obtain any unimpeachable evidence that at normal or slightly elevated temperatures celluloid ever takes fire spontaneously.
In a later section of this paper are given several series of experiments which indicate that at 60°C (140 F) celluloid loses weight very slowly through volatilization of camphor and residual traces of solvent, but that at 100°C(212 F) the loss is much more rapid and is accompanied by decomposition of the pyroxylin itself."

http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/nbstec ... perT98.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The report talks about Celluloid combusting/decomposing in the 250 F-270 F degree range, so 210 F might be about the maximum you would want to risk. It's actually a pretty interesting article, if you're looking for information on celluloid.

Thanks for posting!

Awesome work! You're a brave and courageous man!

Looking forward to the resto thread!

Man I love when old Tort is saved, great job!

Wow, great information to have! Thanks for this!

great info man! thank you for sharing!

I gave it another try with some pickguards that were mildly wavy - this time at 200 degrees for an hour in the oven - some of my reading made me worried that 210 was a bit too close to the temperature where the plastic might burst into flames.

Good results again - the pickguards flattened out nicely without shrinking any more.