Well, unless the top got rebraced at some point, the guitar is not designed for the added tension of steel strings. From your description of it, it sounds as though the usual mistake of assuming that a pin bridge means steel strings is having its usual effect: the top is bellying.
As for the tuners not being original, I haven't seen the guitar, so I can't answer that for certain. But the use of big fat rollers on classical guitars versus smaller steel rollers on steel string instruments is something else that I'm pretty sure evolved some time after this guitar was built. So, again, it could easily have the sort of tuners we associate with steel string slothead guitars nowadays, but they could be original to the instrument.
Anyway, Martin didn't start bracing their guitars for steel strings until the late 1920's - 1927 or 1928, somewhere in there. I don't know whether the Martin company would have braced a guitar for steel strings on special order as early as 1902, but I kind of doubt it. So it's unquestionably too early to have been braced as a steel string guitar in terms of everyday general production, and I suspect that it's also too early to have been intended for steel strings even on a special order basis.
Hope that makes sense.
whm
|