Monthly Archives: May 2023

6 posts

Violin Rib Shortening

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This violin made in Gomersal in West Yorkshire in 1899 by William Heaton has been in my workshop a few times now for minor adjustments. It has been becoming more and more prone to open seams around the bottom bout, the reason for this being that there was barely any overhang left with the joint between the plate and the ribs.

This is a fairly common occurrence for instruments due to the differential shrinkage across the grain as the wood ages. The only real way to resolve it is to take the whole instrument apart and shorten the ribs from the ends, and then re-glue them.

The owner decided that as I was doing some other work on the instrument now anyway with the pegs, now was as good a time as any to bite the bullet and tackle the whole job. The instrument also needed a new bridge, as the old one was too wide for the position of the bass bar (a woefully common occurrence when measurements deviate from the standard specs.) The instrument also needed a good clean and some more varnish applying in areas where it had been worn back to bare wood.

When I took the strings off, it became clear that the centre joint was actually open under the tailpiece. It had obviously been like this for a while as it was filled with dirt.
Although the centre joint was actually reinforced with cleats already, the grain deviated fairly severely from being parallel in the area where it had open, and it had obviously just shrunk enough it had been forced open even despite the cleats.
I realised that in order to regain the overhang along the bottom of the instrument, it would also make sense to unglue the bottom block and move it in slightly.
Originally I planned only to unglue the ribs on the bottom bout and maybe as far as the C bouts, however it became clear that they would benefit from shortening at the top block as well. Also they had been glued on (during a 1960s repair I suspect based upon date written inside) using an overabundance of string smelling but rather ineffectual fish glue. I decided it was best to remove the rib garland entirely and clean off the fish glue away and then re-align everything to be sure of good placement and a good joint. It was rather dramatic taking the instrument apart to such a degree, but because the top block had already been replaced at some point, and the neck pinned in place, I that this would be solidly attached to the back and provide a reliable reference point for getting everything re-attached without altering things like the elevation and projection.
It was very satisfying to get everything re-aligned with the appropriate overhang. Not to mention cleaning away all the nasty fish glue.
There were also old repairs on the front plate which were not of the tidiest variety and more importantly were not actually reinforced in any way. Some small cracks at the bottom of the f-holes had actually re-opened, so I re-glued them and fitted cleats there as well as on the old-repairs, in order to make sure they didn’t go the same way.
And finally once the instrument was reassembled I re-varnished the worn down areas (especially around the points of contact with the players hand on the top bout), and gave the whole thing a protective coat of wax polish before fitting a new bridge and soundpost.

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This violin came in for a general checkup as the strings were not sounding very even with each other. I made so preliminary soundpost adjustments, however in the end came to the conclusion that the soundpost was not a good enough for to be able to position to my satisfaction, so we decided to fit a new one.

Cello Restoration

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This cello arrived at my workshop in early March. The strap on the case had broken, and the cello had fallen, resulting in the neck coming loose (and the button breaking.)

There was also some other issues which had apparently been there for a while but needed taking care of, such as the front centre joint coming open under the tailpiece. Therefor, we decided that it made sense to open the cello up and fix those, which would also provide unimpeded access to the button area for patching and reinforcing prior to resetting the neck.

When I opened up the cello, I discovered that the old repairs which had been done over the years were not particularly well reinforced – you can see here that the studs (which are also stuck on with white glue) are barely covering the cracks in some places.
There was also clear woodworm damage in several places. It was unclear where there was still a current infestation, but obviously one can never be too careful, so I needed to fumigate the cello front before proceeding.
It was easy to see why the neck had come out of the cello so easily: the top block was very small by modern standards, and the mortise has been cut badly and then filled with glue rather than being fitted to the neck root (for those familiar with guitars: that’s not a dovetail joint, that’s just an over-sized mortise!)
I would try to avoid replacing old wood where possible, however in the case of this top block, the original mortise was clearly too shallow to really hold the neck in properly (and it hadn’t). And re-cutting a deeper mortise would weaken the block by leaving even less wood to support the neck. So I made the difficult decision to replace it.
Perhaps one reason why the woodworm were thriving was this excess of glue (which contains protein) all over the inside of the instrument.
Some old cracks were not even reinforced at all, and so needed to be re-glued and cleated before I could proceed with the main work.
There was a substantial amount of woodworm damage in the area where the front was attached to the bottom block. After re-gluing the open centre joint, fitting a saussage patch here served the triple purpose of reinforcing the joint, replacing the worm-weakened-wood and providing a flat gluing surface to ensure a good joint when the top was replaced. I also did the same in the top block area, as this had been damaged and wood lost due to the cello being opened carelessly in the past.
As you can see here, the original cleats were placed very haphazardly, as well as being oversized and poorly glued.
In the end between the front and back of the cello I fitted around 50 cleats, some new and a lot to replace the original ones which weren’t fit for purpose (those that I left, I trimmed down a bit and stained so that they weren’t so obtrusive.) The trapezoid shape ensures that the wood won’t split alongside them as it might if they ran down a single grain line.
It was obvious the cello was made in a bit of a hurry. There were visible gouge / plane marks all over the front, and in some areas the original craftsperson had removed too much wood and then patched it up with shavings to restore the thickness. I left these areas fairly undisturbed although I did re-glue the shavings where they had begun to come loose. I suspect that the cavity underneath them might have provided a pleasant retreat for woodworm, but hopefully they have now been appropriately discouraged.
It was obvious the cello was made in a bit of a hurry. There were visible gouge / plane marks all over the front, and in some areas the original craftsperson had removed too much wood and then patched it up with shavings to restore the thickness. I left these areas fairly undisturbed although I did re-glue the shavings where they had begun to come loose. I suspect that the cavity underneath them might have provided a pleasant retreat for woodworm, but hopefully they have now been appropriately discouraged.
Gluing the new top block in place before reassembling the instrument. You can just see the button area patch protruding from under it.
I felt a lot happier being able to cut a clean fresh mortise to re-set the neck. Hopefully it should be rock solid for decades to come.
Getting ready to finalise the neck fit.

In the end, every repair is a series of decisions between preserving originality, reinforcing things where necessary and also obviously providing an instrument which is nice to look at and rewarding to play.

Also, although we learn about years-long restoration on priceless instruments and the “state of the art” examples of what can be accomplished in our field, in the real world it is quite unusual to get an entirely open time frame / blank cheque for a repair job. Therefor there are always points where it is necessary to make compromises between what one would ideally achieve and what is practical in the current setting.

No job is perfect, but I am quite pleased with the end result. With the surprise of the woodworm and the badly done old repairs, it was more work than either I or the customer originally predicted, but it was good to be able to stay in communication during the process and make sure we were both happy with the decisions I was making on how to proceed. I am really happy that the scale of my business allows me to maintain a direct relationship with the owners of the instruments I work on.

More photos of the process

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This electro-acoustic 5-string violin came in because a harp had fallen on it. It suffered a large crack in the front and a broken bridge, so I was able to get it patched up pretty well. Fairly major damage, but if it had been a classical harp there would probably just have been wood chips left.

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This violin came in because the G peg was slipping. None of the pegs were a brilliant fit, so I tweaked them. The strings were also very hard to press down which was partly a bridge height issue and partly because they were very inflexible high tension steel, so I fitted a nicer set and tweaked the bridge a bit.