I think I'm going to throw up!!

[VH20]

Dampits are probably the way to go with what's available now. If you haven't seen them before, Bob Taylor offers some great videos on their website about humidifying. These show the restoration of a severely dehydrated/damaged guitar:

http://www.taylorguitars.com/see-hea...t.aspx?id=1004

There are three videos on humidity. One that shows the effects, another that shows restoring a dry guitar, and another where they intentionally dry one out in a humidity chamber. Very interesting.

Edit: Well, that link doesn't take you there directly. There's a menu on the right side and the humidity videos can be found under the Performance/Maintenance Tips tab of that menu.

Jim

[Pa SxS]

The use of the hickory reinforcing rod will not necessarily prevent the stock from cracking or breaking. I have a 1925 PH fluid steel that was my grandfathers. As far back as I can remember this stock had cracked behind the top tang and across both sides of the pistol grip deep enough that with a little twisting, the cracks would widen. It is possible however that this rod kept the stock from completely breaking over the years of shooting it. This stock had the hickory reinforcing rod in it along with the patent stamp behind the grip cap. According to Stockfixers, they had never seen this modification on any of the Parkers they've worked on so it must have been pretty rare. I suspect that my stock was an old one from years ago that Parker decided to use up. Either the time and expense to install the rod or possibly that it didn't work as planned resulted in Parker not doing all the stocks that way. I sent the stock to Stockfixers in Wyoming for repair.