Pirate luthier adventures continued:
After nearly a year I gathered up enough courage to try repairing the broken neck of violin 10, which sports a whole crime scene with traces of multiple repair attempts. I had cleaned out the place where it needs gluing early on, but then hesitated to proceed because I was afraid the connection wouldn't hold the tension of the strings. So it stayed on the back burner for many months, while I kept picking the lower hanging fruit.
Two weeks ago, however, I just cooked up some hide glue and fitted the two parts together again, and they hold like a charm. I first tested the connection with a mock setup using random old strings, and when that held together I ordered some really cheap strings from ebay (ten times cheaper than what I normally buy) and put those on, together with an upcycled old bridge. With that setup, the violin is now playable, stays in tune, and still hasn't fallen apart. It doesn't sound very nice, so if somebody wanted to play it I'd recommend a more expensive set of strings and maybe a new bridge. It is a 3/4 sized violin so I have no use for it myself. (And I also don't have a 3/4 bow to go with it, nor a case that offers reasonable protection.) It came with a label suggesting that it may date from the 1920s.
Here are a few photos in its post-repair state. First the re-attached neck.
Then the front
and back (with another repair patch unrelated to the neck crisis):
List of violins in the pirate luthier series:
violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.
violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.
violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.
violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.
violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.
violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired, as reported above.
violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
violins 13) through to 15) I bought locally through gumtree or facebook, nothing special to report.
violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, sadly not made by the Mittenwald luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.
violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.
violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland, which I restored and returned to its family.
violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.
violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. My current plan is to make this one an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.
violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.
violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite (although I'll have to fix that crack at some point).
violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).
violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam. I'm now playing this one at sessions, and number 22 at home.
Balance 18.4.2025: Of the 24 violins listed above, 7 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 13 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 1 taken in for repair only and returned to its family.
Of the 23 acquired, 6 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 9 currently in house and ready to play, 3 in house and still broken.
List of non-violins in the pirate luthier series:
An old Irish banjo
guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.
and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.
