The owner of this sweet violin gave it to me on Tuesday, May 20 at SideCar’s open mic, because he wanted it to have a good home where it might be fixed. I was looking forward to spending some time with this beauty and showing it to him next week. 🙂

Notice the position of the strings on the neck. In the repair, I couldn’t fix that completely because the neck is not perfectly even between the F holes, but I think I was able to make it better.

Thursday, May 22. The broken pieces removed left a lot off old glue to clean up.

These pieces, loose and broken in three pieces, were cleaned up and glued back together. Whoever repaired this before had some pencil lines to follow, so, not knowing any better, they were followed.

Thursday afternoon, the glue dried, the pieces were reinstalled. When you don’t have enough clamps and wedges, pencils and paper clips are probably not the best solution, but they do work.

Ok. Now what?

Thursday, early afternoon, time to put it back together. The wood was badly warped, but this clamp held it in place really well. Having only one of those clamps, it was decided that doing one side at a time would be best. Off to a gig with Saco River Jazz while the glue dries.

Late Thursday night, after the Saco River Jazz gig, it’s time to move on to the other side. Again, no wedges available.

Same situation as the first side, the wood was badly warped so it really needed to be pressed into place with clamps. And because you can never have enough clamps, sometimes you just have to stop what you’re doing and go make some. Finally, it’s a good thing that night-time is for sleeping, otherwise it would be really difficult to let the glue dry without checking to see if it’s dry yet… just sayin’

Here’s the finished instrument. It’s really lovely. I’d love to hear a violinist or fiddler play it.

That was fun!