Cello Restoration – Parmakis Instruments

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.

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