Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 52
Scan 52
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 38. See the scan on archive.org.
1has been found to excel that made with wood and glue. Many, perhaps the majority of instances in which this has been used, have also been failures; not from any inherent defect in the substance, but from lack of proper management. Different varieties of wood have been tried, a great drawback being the contraction when the glue dries; this is markedly the case when a hard wood, powdered by glass-paper, is used. The granulations and their hardness are also objectionable, and if ground up too small, contraction to a greater degree takes place, and the repairer's object is defeated. Long experience has shown that the disintegrated fibres of soft pine, not powdered, offer the best security against contraction, it can be made strong or weak according to the thickness of glue used, is always at hand, and on the whole gives the least trouble. It requires little or no colouring, and moreover approaches nearest in character—or can be made to do so—to the surrounding material. If there is a selection possible, the well known soft grained American pine should in preference be used. There is a good and a bad way of managing the process to ensue. To roughly seize a chump of wood and begin filing it away anyhow, collecting the residue and making a rough paste, will bring disappointment, as sure as houses built with wrongly mixed mortar. To put method into the matter, a piece of clear, knotless, soft, grained wood should be obtained and cut to a cylindrical form (diagram 19). A flat file of rather fine texture—this may be according to the size of the instrument to be repaired—should be worked against it at right angles. The file (not glass or sand-paper) must not be of the toothed kind, but grooved. The shower of particles sent off during the action of filing, will consist of a number of minute silky fibres, which, of course, must be collected together, placed upon a clean porcelain dish, or palette, and worked up with glue—strong—for filling spaces in the maple, and weaker, if used for the pine of the front table. It can be tucked into the crevices as required by the end of a small, worn, or pointed knife. Some portions will remain above the surface and, in fact, will not go in
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.