Luthiers, what are your greatest disaster stories?

November 5, 2012 at 11:58 PM · Hard to narrow it down to one, but the latest was a pegbox split through the A peg hole on the large side only. It had been "fixed" by drilling a hole through the back and wiring it together.

November 7, 2012 at 03:29 AM · lol. that's pretty creative. like stitches, right?

November 7, 2012 at 04:04 AM · Probably more like a variation on a Spanish windlass.

Sorry until almost two years ago my background was more guitars and recorders / wooden flutes.

I believe it was Ingeborg von Huene speaking at an Austin Chapter of the American Recorder Society meeting who said the worst repairs her husband Friedrich hand to deal with were the infamous “daddyfixits”.

I once had a friend come to town with a guitar involved in a car accident. The lower treble bout had a broken / crushed sound board (she had the missing pieces) and a chunk out of the sides. After picking her up at the airport I had to lead a choir and told her I would look at it when I got home.

For some reason she didn’t wait and tried to repair the break with some wood glue I had. She had not considered any need for tools or method for that matter.

By the time I returned some of the glue had already set. It was not a pretty site.

Though she is long gone, this was over 22 years ago the guitar is still here waiting to be turned into tatting shuttles or something like that.

Pat T.

November 7, 2012 at 06:49 PM · Glued-on bridges, glued-in sound posts, glued-in end buttons, bow tips held in place with wire. I haven't yet come across any glued pegs, but we'll see... I've seen a bass and a cello with the tops nailed to the sides, and I had a (formerly)nice 19th century cello in my shop that had horrible crack repairs and varnish retouch that looked like tarmac. But at least it had 3 different facsimile 18th century italian labels glued in different locations.

Sometimes you can almost see the rising agony, written in epoxy all over the instrument, of someone suddenly realizing that he or she didn't have even the slightest notion of how to successfully finish the repair project they just started.

November 7, 2012 at 07:41 PM · Luthiers aren' the only ones seeing terrible "repair' jobs. A 19th century Schonbach fiddle had extensive edge repair work done with epoxy-fibre glass. Black fibre glass! Another violin had been stripped and was revarnished with polyurethane. Probably good boat varnish considering the sound had pretty well disappeared.

What about using clear tape to pull together an open seem. Works but leaves permanent damage to the varnish. Have seen elastic bands used for the same purpose; not sure if that causes problems but I guess it could if left on for long.

November 8, 2012 at 10:39 AM · To "glued-in soundpost" I can add "nailed-in soundpost". I met a fiddler at a session once who proudly showed me that this was what he had done to stop his soundpost from falling over when he changed strings. Mercifully, the fiddle was a certifiable VSO.

Many years ago my classical guitar teacher, who was also a guitar luthier, told me he had lost count of the number of customers who had brought for repair guitars that they had "repaired" with epoxy resin. I've also heard of epoxy repairs being carried out on cracked wooden flutes.

November 8, 2012 at 12:29 PM · Speaking of flutes. I had a friend, who as an adult beginner decided there was nothing to cleaning and adjusting his flute. Fortunately a low end student model.

He lubricated it with WD40. He never did learn to play the flute.

Pat T

November 8, 2012 at 02:28 PM · Patrick: WD-40? Wow. I thought everyone knew you used fresh possum grease...

November 9, 2012 at 01:00 AM · I hate the appearance of high jacking this thread but I must respond to Elise.

Where do you get your possum grease? I have arthritis in both knees and could use some. I thought it was available OTC, but I can’t find any around here. And I don’t even want to think about the look (and grin) the last opossum I got to close too gave me. Plus, they are probably hard to squeeze the grease out of.

Now in the world of doing the right thing but having the wrong results, I use almond oil on my recorders and flutes. I hope you can relate to the image of opening a case containing four nice wooden (palissander and bubinga) recorders and a granadilla and ivory one-key flute and finding your instruments covered in sugar ants.

I also like the friend who had a nice maple recorder and left it by a window. She had centered it nicely so that lengthwise the top half was white the bottom half brown.

I also had a teacher and her husband who left the heat off down stairs and it reached down to 17º F (Austin, Texas). They woke to what sounded like a gun going off. Split boxwood. I don’t think they ever found anyone willing to try and fix that recorder. I didn’t think about epoxy at the time, but we should have at least wrapped it in wire and twisted it tight.

TTFN

Pat

November 9, 2012 at 02:13 AM · Patrick,the best possum grease is found on your tire immediately after running over a road kill. Can't believe you didn't already know that. Musta been handicapped by having rich parents or somethin'.

You can get skunk squeeze for spicing up the chile the same way.

November 9, 2012 at 03:34 AM · Hi David ~~~~~ I suspected the disasters topic would flush you out of hiding, even without any (yet) sawzall stories....

my father fixed the crack in the top of my violin with epoxy. It was still good over 40 yrs later when I had a luthier repair it. I wonder how long his glue will last....

:D

November 9, 2012 at 04:07 AM · David you can can also render the road kill possum in an autoclave and skim the fat the next day.

November 9, 2012 at 12:19 PM · I know this isn't as much fun as horror stories, but let me insert an example of something which was done really RIGHT.

About a week ago, a cellist was playing chords aggressively, and knocked one of the corners off the cello with her bow (a cello I had made). She found the piece, picked it up carefully with a minimum of touching, wrapped in a small soft cloth, put the cloth in a small plastic bag, and placed the bag in a hard plastic "card file" box. I warned her not to touch the area on the cello where the piece had broken from, and she apparently followed that to the letter.

(For some reason, there's a tendency for people to want to "feel" damage, and this can break or round off fragile sharp edges, not to mention contaminating exposed bare wood parts)

Anyway, everything arrived in such good condition that with about an hour of setup time to figure out the best clamping method, and figure out how to have the piece locate in exactly the right spot even after the slippery glue is applied, I was able to get it glued back on in such a way that I don't think anyone but an expert would ever know it happened. That's without any varnish retouching. If she decides to have some minor retouching done in the future, I don't think even the best expert would find it, even if they were told exactly where to look, and what to look for.

I'll repeat the most important things which enabled a successful repair:

*She found the piece immediately, before it was lost or stepped on, and before the cat had a chance to bat it around.

*She didn't grope the parts.

*She didn't try to position the piece back in place to see if it fit.

*She didn't try to glue it herself.

*She carefully protected the broken areas, and brought the cello in right away.

Just to give an idea of how important it is not to touch fresh damage (including cracks), I only touched the broken surface once, after carefully washing my hands. That was to stick the broken-off corner to a piece of tape. I handled it using the free end of the tape as a handle from that point on.

November 9, 2012 at 01:02 PM · What if a number of things had been done wrong instead? With this particular break, a top-notch repair person could still make the damage "go away" more or less, but it could have turned into a very time consuming and costly project.

With other kinds of damage, like a crack in a top or a back, they can get screwed up enough by the time they get to us that it's nearly impossible for even the best to make them "disappear". Or maybe they can be made to "go away" initially, but not stay gone.