About a year ago I came across a Hurricane Katrina damaged Regal Tricone Resonator. This guitar was severely water damaged and pitted to the point that the plating was flaking off. The neck was broken at the heel and barely attached to the body with a few massive blobs of epoxy and a some “lovingly” placed drywall screws.
I sent the body out to have the plating removed by reverse electrolysis to preserve the orginal soldering. The dents and scratches were removed. Then the body, coverplate and tailpiece were show plated in black nickel over a copper base. Restoring the metal and plating took almost 4 months.
I carved a new honduran mahogany neck and a hard maple neck stick and gave it a bound, ebonized sapele fretboard with abablone markers and added a polished unbleached bone nut.
The orginal t-bridge was coated in a thick build of some sort of nasty paint, I stripped the bridge, polished and carefully removed material to reduce the weight by a total of 9 grams. The saddle was made from fossilized walrus oosik. Cosmo Black open back tuners and all new allen head cap screws to secure the coverplate finished off the hardware.