Violin Forum/Message Board

[Mat Roop]

This old thru neck violin has had metal geared tuners installed... and what a mess it made!.
Need some advice as to the best way to ream the holes clean so they can be securely glued and bushed. Problem is the holes are so damaged that the reamer will not seat to make a clean cut.

Any suggestions will be most welcome!.... Cheers, Mat

[Chet Bishop]

Not sure of the correct name, but "cheek plates" is what comes to mind-- essentially replacing most of the wood of the sides of the pegbox with a patch that is either from outside or inside, but which adds strength, not just plugs holes.

In this case, it would seem appropriate to do it from the outside. You would accomplish two things-- replace the strength, and eliminate the ugly.

I think I would carve the holes to closely match plugs, from the inside, then do the cheek plates from the outside. Is the fiddle really worth the trouble, though? Or is it the "heirloom fiddle" from someone's great-great aunt, and priceless in its own right? (I've dealt with that a few times. )
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Chet Bishop
https://bluefiddles.com
https://fivestringfiddles.com

[L P Reedy]

In my case, very similar to yours except the E and D holes rather than D and A, I think the cello reamer will do the job. I can't say for sure whether my approach or Chet's would be stronger, but I feel confident mine will work. I also recently did a little test that indicates that standard end grain bushings actually help keep the peg holes round. Unbushed holes are prone to out-of-roundness unless the pegs are turned regularly because of the grain orientation of the peg box.

With extreme care you might be able to ream one half of each hole, glue in a bushing and then ream the other half for a second bushing. But I think that will be very difficult.

[Mat Roop]

Thanks for the suggestions.... they will be workable.
The fiddle is probably not worth the effort.... but it has been well played ( as evidenced by the wear on the fingerboard) and so I suspect it has good sound.
It has a one piece back and the top has a nice full arch. I enjoy giving new life to an old instrument rather than see it sit in a corner or worse yet get thrown out. Some fiddler will likely appreciate it.... a labour of love I guess!
The wear on the cheek is not very deep at all... just barely thru the varnish.
I am thinking I will carve a plug to roughly fill the oblong holes, then drill and ream to get to original wood to properly fit and glue a new bushing, thereby cutting out one end of the rough plug, then if I drill at the other side of the hole i should be able to ream a clean new hole that will remove the rest of the rough fit plug and fit a new bushing. All that remains then is to drill the final peg hole in its correct location and fit a new peg. I may be tempted to install a spiral bushing on each new hole for strength....but I'll see how it goes with plugging the holes first.
I will try trimming the cheeks and if that does not work , an exterior patch should clean things up.
Thanks for your suggestions!... Mat

[Chet Bishop]

If it were not for the "major ugly" on the outside, I would have suggested inside cheek plates...much more difficult to do, but less visible. In this case, there is so much cosmetic damage outside (not to mention the structural compromises) that the outside patches seem appropriate.

The cheek plates have the capacity to restore some of the missing strength that would not be helped by plugs, nor even (in this case) by spiral bushings.

The Spiral Bushings actually might be an appropriate "finishing touch" to lock the layers together and minimize the tendency toward splitting.

I had to do this on a fiddle submitted to me for repair, because the pegbox had been split already, and wood had been lost (full thickness), and the "repairer" simply glued in chunks of wood to fill the holes.

The advantage I had was that the pegbox walls were already abnormally thin, so I simply added wood from the inside (doubled the wall thickness), carefully finished the edges so that it was almost invisible, drilled and reamed, and spiral bushed for new pegs, and pretty much salvaged the fiddle. The only things I removed were the badly mismatched and wrong-grain-direction chunks that had been glued in place earlier. I replaced them with carefully fitted, and correct-grain-direction pieces from the outside, before adding the cheek-plates from the inside.

The cheek-plates were tricky, because they had to cover the entire inside surface on each side of the pegbox, and be nearly invisible when complete. It took a while to get it right, but it worked out well.
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Chet Bishop
https://bluefiddles.com
https://fivestringfiddles.com

[ctviolin]

How decent is the violin?

Have you considered grafting a new head on?
In it's entirety?, and not bothering to mess with all of those holes?
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[Mat Roop]

Ct... it is a typical basic 1700's thru neck factory violin. It is not playable yet as the neck is loose, but hey, it does have corner blocks .... at the bottom corners
What is good is that the fingerboard is well worn suggesting it was a good sounding instrument... or maybe that's all they had available to play! The bass bar is integral to the top, so I'll be replacing that.
As far as the peg box goes, I will rather restore it so that it can retain it's historic character and authenticity.
An unusual feature of this violin is that the long arch of the top has not deformed... many of these old violins (VSO's?) have the top slightly collapsed so that the long arch is slightly flat in the middle... but not this one. This fact is making me think about whether I should maybe retain the original integral bass bar, ... put it together and see what it sounds like, If not good, I'll just open it up again and redo the bass bar.
.. Just another labour of love... again!
Cheers, Mat

[ctviolin]

[ctviolin]

Hey Mat,
I'd like to see this repair - so please post after photos too?

Thanks
ct
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Listen,
Learn.

[DonLeister]

Maybe you can put some 'friendly plastic' or bondo in a small ziplock bag and stuff it in the pegbox, dam it with corks north and south so you don't have to dig so much of it out.
Then you can see where you are reaming. Looks like it'll need multiple bushings in some of the holes.
Those smaller spots that have been gouged out I have seen filled with mother of pearl, kinda folky! Or maybe fill with filler of some kind and touch up.

[Mat Roop]

[Mat Roop]

You asked... here is the process and results...

















Note that where you see white and plastic, that is plaster of paris in saran wrap... I used that to fill the pegbox inside to give the inside cheeks support so that the inside would not splinter when drilled. Also the same when I clamped the cheek patches on.
The tool I used for making the dowels was a heavy drill bit gauge.. worked great.
Also, all the peg holes were bushed with a spiral bushing of Mulberry paper wrapped hot hide glue. For drilling the final holes, I use a lipped brad point ... it is awesome and cuts absolutely clean
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?cat=1,180,42240,42247&p=42247
The final looks not too bad with the bit of antiquing, but I do expect I did not get the hole placement quite right... we'll see.
Looking forward to honest critique.
Cheers, Mat

[ollieken]

Hello mat from what I saw in the first pic I think it would easy become
a drinking problem . A good job with what you had to work with I also like to keep the old work if possible . Ken

[FiddleDoug]

Nice job!!
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Doug Wall

www.wallindependent.com

[kubasa]

Yes, nice job indeed!