Michael Purcell

This fine French instrument still has its original neck, but sadly it doesn’t conform to the measurements of todays standards. Its neck length is too short and its height out over the top of the violin is much too low. There is little else one can do but graft the scroll onto a new new block. Done carefully it is barely noticeable. The first step is to remove the neck from the corpus of the violin. You CAREFULLY saw just to the neck side of the button. I will update this process as the work progresses

This cello had an ill fitting soundpost that was not in the right location.Therefore it didn’t support the top against the tremendous strain of the string tension down on the treble foot of the bridge and eventually the soft spruce top developed a crack. In order to repair this crack you need to first glue the crack and then fit an inlaid patch into the top forming a “landing pad” of new wood for the new soundpost. Without this new patch the immense pressure down on the post post would simply force the crack open again. The first step is to carve out the spruce at the post area. At its deepest point the top is left  1 mm thick. The photo shows light from behind the cello streaming through the patch area. In order for the patch  to the completely fit the scooped out shape of the top you need to use chalk as a transfer material. The surfaces must fit exactly so that no distortion of the top will be visible on the outside of the cello. If the patch doesn’t fit well the top will show the imprint of the patch. The chalk must thoroughly cover the patch before it is glued in. Once glued in, it is trimmed and carefully scraped to blend with the contour of the top. Notice that the dark, winter grains of the patch are at a slight diagonal to the grains of the top. This provides added strength by spanning the crack, rather than the grains of the patch running similarly with the top, with the chance that the patch could both soft summer grains over the crack with the soundpost exerting its pressure there and re-opening the crack

A beautiful,small English viola c. 1800 by William Forster. The bass bar is crucial to the lower registers resonance. It has two functions. It helps support the top against downward string tension  exerted  through the bridge .It also acts as a conduit through which the vibrations are spread out over the whole spruce top. The soft spruce of the top flexes widely giving the lower register its “growl”. This viola is a higher arched model which means the bar can and should be slighter since the higher arching needs less support. Few bars are correct in terms of placement and heft. I make sure all my instruments have a proper bass bar.