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.

The Highland Woodworker TV Episode 11 - Christopher Schwarz

The latest episode of The Highland Woodworker TV show is out.

• Chris Schwarz welcomes you into his home shop for a fascinating insight into one of the most popular woodworkers on the planet
• Sculptor Larry Ridge and the people of his Chattanooga shop show how to carve carousel horses
• Chuck Bender shows his technique for using a screw head to scratch a bead in a board.

Head on over to the website
http://tinyurl.com/pstptv5

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.

Ebay delay

I ordered some lutherie tools from a Chinese site on eBay in January to finish off the violin repair. These are a violin reamer and a violin peg shaver. Needless to say they have not arrived yet.
Hope they arrive soon as I need to get this violin out of my shop and back to my customer