I bought this guitar off Ebay for a possible X brace conversion. It is a vintage Kay guitar with a beautiful red sunburst top.The dark blue foil label and the three bar Kay logo on the headstock dates it  to the 1940s. It has a spruce top, and laminate mahogany back and sides, original brass frets, bone nut and a walnut fingerboard. It had no tuners. There are no model numbers but it is  approximately the size of an OM guitar. It had a few top splits and the bridge had pulled loose, but nothing too terrible. Unfortunately it was severely damaged in transit, so much so, that I thought it was a goner. I just love the red sunburst that Kay produced years ago (I restored an almost identical guitar a few years back) and I finally gave in and took on the project of restoring this old beauty. It would prove to be a challenge!
 
The damage in transit was quite significant. The shipping box had taken a big hit and even though it was double boxed, it was crushed in. The top had several splits, the neck had been pushed back, breaking the top on both sides of the fingerboard extension and the bridge had torn off the top leaving several nasty holes from the screws that held it in place. In addition, the area under the bridge had been split across the grain (an earlier damage) and bad been poorly glued with white glue.     
It was a real mess! Even so, the guitar intrigued me and I eventually gave in and decided to see if I could save it. 
 
I took off the neck, removed and saved the binding then took off the top. Someone had squeezed  white glue into the neck joint in the past in a poor attempt to fix a loose neck. They had also just pored in a stream of glue inside the body in a bad attempt to re-glue the back lower braces. I was able to get the neck off cleanly, but had to re-build the dove tail wings due to the earlier damage. Surprisingly, the inside of the body was a beautiful birds eye maple veneer. Kay guitar backs and sides are laminated and it had separated from the rest of the back ply's over the years. I was able to re-glue the inside layer once again, then, began to re-build the top. I re-glued the splits by the fingerboard extension, splinted the the worst top split and glued the rest using hot hide glue. All of the breaks were re-enforced using nearly 30 cleats.   
The heel had been broken in multiple places and I first re-glued it, then removed the heel cap and drilled through the heel and glued in a dowel to add strength. 
 
To deal with the damage under the bridge area, I cut out the shattered wood around the cross grain split and the area where the bridge bolts had pulled through and inlaid new spruce. This would later be strengthened by the bridge plate and the X bracing and would sit completely   under the bridge.
 
I X braced the guitar with a modified scalloped Martin style bracing pattern adding a maple bridge plate. I then re-attached the top to the body re-using the original binding.   
 
At this point, I began to restore the damaged finish. I usually try to do most of the finish repair before I put the neck back on. As I said, I’m a sucker for these red sunburst guitars and I wanted to preserve that look as much as possible. I used Stu Mac colored lacquer pens, red stain and french polish and did a ton of experimenting to get the finish as close as possible using only hand work, building up the french polish and drop filling dings, then leveling and  sanding it down to fill the many scratches and chips it had.
 
Once I got the finish done, I re-set the neck and glued on a new old stock rosewood pin bridge. I replaced the missing tuners with modern knock off Klussons. This guitar originally had a pin-less bridge but I decided to go with an old stock pin bridge since it was now X braced and I feel it makes for a better sound.  I widened the saddle slot to increase the slot angle then I created a compensated bone saddle. 
 
The finished guitar looks beautiful, though you can clearly see the splint through the finish. The neck has a full D profile and is slightly larger than a modern style neck. 
 
The sound is even better that I had hoped for with a clear, full, bright tone like an OM should have. The action came in right on the  money, just under 3/32” on the 12th fret low E and 2/32 at the 12th fret high E and the intonation is spot on. No buzzes anywhere up the neck.  It now sounds and plays better than it ever did!