Back to the Cromwell, and a few other tidbits

So, a couple months ago we made a spruce patch for a dig in the top of the Cromwell. We carved out a small bowl shape, supported the heck out of the underside of the top, then pressed a wet piece of spruce wood into the hole with a LOT of pressure.

Later on, and completely undocumented, we unclamped the thing, and glued that press-fit and now dry piece of spruce into the hole.

Last week, it was chisel time.

This is after we started carving. Basically, we took a nice, flat chisel with a bent handle, and started bringing the patch down. 

This is the final product. 

The patch is a nice fit, fills the space perfectly, and even has grain that is a good match to the surrounding grain. It is also very light. 

The plan is to expose the patch to a lot of sunlight, and then add some tint and shellac to blend it in. It looks better than a big divot in the top, and it's a lot stronger.  

The patch looks great, and it is very well fit. This beats sitting down and carving a patch for hours while chalk fitting. It was pretty terrifying to squish a chunk of spruce on the top of a vintage instrument with tremendous pressure, but, thanks to careful placement of cauls under the top, there is no damage at all.

A violin project came over to me from a cousin, who want to be able to play this family heirloom. It had spent most of its life strung left handed, even though it was built right handed. Someone added mechanical tuners some time in the past, and there was a terrible reglue of the fingerboard at some time in the past, using really gooey epoxy that failed to harden.

I've already stripped most of the hardware. 

I did a quick glue job on this crack. 

But when I removed the tuners - oh my goodness. That is a real mess. 

That is a LOT of damage, and the neck is badly warped as well. It may be time to think of just replacing the neck. 

It was a hide glue day, so I glued up several projects. Just separated backs and sides. 

Ray is also working on a banjo, a nice Bacon FF banjo with a pretty poorly set neck. He was building up the end of the dowel stick to reset the angle, and had to also fill the screw hole. Fun stuff!