Violin Repair Job - Part 3 Completion

The bridge in position

I shaped the underside of the bridge by putting a small piece of self adhesive sandpaper onto the body over the sound post location. Fortunately the sound-post had remained in position for at least the last 50+ years. Normally they fall out when string tension is relieved but it hadn't in this case. Next I gently rubbed the bottom of the bridge against the sandpaper until it was exactly the same profile as the top. I used a pre-finished 4/4 (full size) bridge so that was the only work I needed to do.


After removing the sandpaper I oiled the fingerboard with some lemon oil. The finish on the rest of the body just needed a polish over with a damp cloth and some proprietary violin polish. I made sure it wasn't a polish containing silicones as the finish is French polish on the violin. It came up great considering it's age and the condition it came to me in.

Using the coils of the string to force
the tapered tuners into the tapered holes.

 The next job was to restring it. First of all I used all-metal strings. However I found that the tuners slipped and it would not stay in tune even after leaving the strings to stretch and the tension seemed high. I suddenly had a thought - the original stringing of this particular violin was probably using an animal derived string. The closest modern string to this is a nylon cored string. These are about 4 or 5 times as expensive. I bought a set and fitted them. They worked perfectly and there was less tension on the structure.

The finished violin

I don't play violin but brought it up to concert pitch and left it overnight. The next day it had not lost any appreciable tuning. It sounds like I think it should sound but maybe a player could make any necessary micro adjustments. The violin is now back in it's battered case waiting to go back to its owner. This was a fun project and I hope I have given a new lease of life back to the violin to carry on another 100 years.

Violin repair job - Part 2

The delivery of repair tools from China from an Ebay site has finally happened. To be fair the items arrived within the specified delivery period.
I had ordered two items, a violin peg hole reamer and a violin peg shaver.
The reamer was fine and worked straight away. I used some blue tape as a depth guide to make sure each hole was the same taper.

The peg shaver needed some work on the blades as I believe they have been hardened too much making the edge brittle. Holding such small blades is difficult but I managed to spend a little time getting them sharp on my waterstones.
They are held in the brass body with 2 brass screws per blade. Under each blade are two shims to prevent distortion when tightening the screws. There are 3 double sided blades in all each one over a different sized tapered hole.
I found that moistening the ebony tuning pegs before putting them into the shaver (essentially a glorified pencil sharpener) made the job easy. The resulting shaving were nice and left a nicely finished peg.

I did all the pegs the same amount to ensure consistency.

Next time I will show how to fit the bridge.

Violin repair job - Part 1

One of my friends has asked me to have a look at his old violin with a view to repairing it. It was his mothers and the last time he remembers it being used was in the late 1950s. In all that time it has not had any strings on it and has lost various components.
It appears to be one made in Germany or Bohemia in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It has a head scroll in the shape of a lion or large cats head. I identified the violin type as being a European Tyrolean Lion Scroll violin.
See this forum entry http://www.fiddlehangout.com/archive/26910

Body

The body seems to be primarily made from maple and the top seems to be spruce.There is no great figure to the wood that was used in its construction. The purfling around the edge of the top plate is a single channel. The top plate has become detached from the upper rib in the area where it would be held under the chin. I wonder if sweat has taken its toll and caused the glue to fail. This needs re-gluing and I have some hide glue to do the repair.

Tyrolean Lion Scroll Violin