Amateur Violin Repair

Lily is enjoying her group violin classes so much that I thought it would be fun to start a beginners group for Luke. I've talked to a couple of moms who were interested, so when I saw a couple of old Suzuki Nagoya violins very cheap on ebay, I bought them. The first one arrived this week with one problem: it had been shipped with the bridge up (and without a sound post) and had cracked in transit. You can see the cracks here. The seller offered a full refund if I wanted to ship the violin back, or a partial refund if I wanted to keep it. Given the price of the violin (very low) I didn't think it was really worth shipping it back--and I thought I just might try my hand at a repair. By the way, if you happen to be a luthier please don't read any further as I am sure my methods will make you cringe. For those who are interested, this is a 1/10 size violin made in 1980.

Here's a picture of the violin as it arrived. You can see the damage done in shipping--one long crack running up from the f-hole, and another small one running down from the top right shoulder.

Another view of the cracks.

I took the strings, bridge, and tail piece off. I spread wood glue on the exposed edges of the cracks, aligned them, then "clamped" them together by tying a ribbon around the violin. I left this in place for 24 hours.

A closeup of the cracks after I glued them.

This is 24 hours later as I was getting ready to finish setting up the violin. The little piece of wood next to the violin is a sound post I scavenged from another instrument. The tail piece is from a cheap chinese violin I bought a few years back. The strings are good ones I bought for Lily's violin but didn't like on it--I ended up using a different brand.

This is my improvised sound post setter. I actually bought a sound post setter several years ago, but discovered that it was really made to fit full size instruments and was very difficult to maneuver in a small violin. This was my solution.

I used pliers to bend the safety pin. The sound post usually sits slightly behind the right leg of the bridge (or in that general vicinity) so I measured from the f-hole to the mark left by the bridge foot to know where to bend the safety pin.

Here's the safety pin inserted into the sound post.

Inserting the sound post into the violin. You can see the repaired crack in this picture.

Retrieving the sound post from the violin. The first two times I set it up I couldn't get it to stand straight. I knocked it down trying to adjust it and had to get it out of the violin and start all over twice. Getting a loose sound post out of a violin can be tricky--I basically rolled it back and forth while holding the violin up-side-down and trying to stop the sound post with the safety pin as it rolled past the f-holes.

I finally got the sound post into what seemed an acceptable position. Here's a picture looking through the f-hole.

Add strings, bridge, and tail piece. Almost done!

I fixed the chin rest in place and Tah-Dah! New violin. The real test, of course, was to get a bow and play it. I was very pleased with the result. This violin has a very smooth tone, and is surprisingly resonant for such a small instrument. It sings particularly nicely on the A and E strings. The D and G sound slightly fuzzy to my ear, I wonder if that is inherent in the instrument or has something to do with my sound post placement. I'm not planning to try moving it around, though! In any case, beginning violinists play mostly on the A and E strings, and those sound beautiful.

Altogether, I am very pleased with the results of my amateur violin repair! Hm, wonder what I can try my hand at next...