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!

Kamaka Uke, sanding blocks, and filling in missing wood

So, the last thing I posted before was about sanding blocks. Here we go.

Sanding blocks

 There you go. Get a piece of wood, and glue sandpaper to one side. After it is dry, take it to your belt sander and true up the edges. You now have a sanding block that can get into corners and clean up all kinds of problems. This is what I used to clean up the place where the bridge goes on the Cromwell, and what I started using to set up the Kamaka for wood replacement.

Speaking of the Kamaka, here is my first idea.

The sides are now flat diagonals, and I have put in some koa in the deep part of the slot. 

Not too great. 

Really ugly from the side, there is some significant wood loss here. 

I started trimming a new piece to fit in. This is an early shot, I got it to fit quite well. It's a tough fit, though.

My friend Ray came over, and we started looking at what I had done, and the instrument overall, and decided to get more drastic.

Just chop it all out, the heck with it. Much easier to fit a nice piece in. 

But how will I flatten out the bottom of that space? With another custom sanding block, of course! I made this and sanded it to barely fit in the space. I managed to get down pretty far, then the sandpaper came off, and I had to go pick up the kids, and it was time to quit. I'll get back to it tomorrow, though. 

 That is a lot of wood to remove, but it will be stronger for it. Frankly, there is no good way to fix this disaster, short of making a new neck, which I will end up doing if the thing breaks at some point. For now, this is going to create a workable solution.

I also took a look at the Cromwell with Ray.

This is that hole. 

The patch now fit perfectly. Hooray! I won't glue this up until the back braces are done, though.  

There was a nasty piece of missing wood at the bridge, so we chiseled out a bowl shaped hole. 

A little sanding made it smoother, and more bowl shaped. 

We carved a piece of spruce to roughly fit, then soaked it really well and clamped it on hard. The pressure will help it form to the hole, and then I can glue it on and shave it level. 

We ended up leaving off the wax paper, so that the moisture helps form the top as well. There will be some color and finish work to do, but at least there will be wood there to color and finish! The chip out in that spot was really bad from the previous bridge failure. 

 I'd never heard of doing a spruce repair this way before. I'm excited to see how it turns out.