Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 40
Scan 40
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1accommodate itself to the strain. When the parts under strain have settled down, the peg is seen to be as near as possible horizontal with the length of the violin. The best way, undoubtedly, is to make the peg an accurate but not too tight fit, it should be sufficiently long to go right through the block. In cases where the hole has been enlarged, badly directed or even made ragged by a bad tool, it should be a stopped up very carefully with a plug, neatly glued in, and a fresh hole bored. Sometimes this has proved necessary from the carelessness of the original maker. The old masters were not always exact with their mechanical fittings in connection with the violin. The moderns, for obvious reasons, have paid much attention to them. I remember coming across an Italian violin that had changed hands frequently for the asserted reason of insufficient tone. The maker having a renown for considerable power, it appeared to me that the tone was possibly there, but that from some undiscovered cause it was not properly emitted. On examination I found that the maker had joined the ribs, not at the central part as usual, but too much to the left, perhaps a pupil or assistant had bored the hole at the junction. There were besides, some tinkering by modern regulators endeavouring to counteract the uneven strain over the instrument. The right spot, or it may be called the axis of the instrument, having been found, the peghole was neatly and permanently plugged, and a fresh one bored, which allowed the strain to be better distributed. The result was satisfactory and delightful; the tone of much power and purity had free play in manifesting itself, and the violin was enabled to take its rightful position among its brethren. A few words as to the right spot for the peghole. This was treated by many of the old Italian liutaros as a matter for mere guess work apparently, when there was no join in the upper table, nor in the lower one, sometimes the lower rib being continuous. The best spot, and therefore the right one, may be fixed upon by finding the centre between the two inner edges of the purfling on the upper table at the lower part, the same
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