Old French Bass full Restoration

[P Bill]

Matthew , Great thread . It's got me thinking about finally
tackling a vintage uke I've had in the too hard basket for years .
P Bill

[Nick]

Matthew , Great thred . It's got me thinking about finally
tackling a vintage uke I've had in the too hard basket for years .
P Bill

Welcome to the forum Bill. You do a bit of bass work yourself by the looks of your avatar, either that or you've got the proportions of that violin slightly off Laughing . (That's assuming it's you in the pic?)

[Kim]

Matthew , Great thred . It's got me thinking about finally
tackling a vintage uke I've had in the too hard basket for years .
P Bill

Welcome to the forum Bill. You do a bit of bass work yourself by the looks of your avatar, either that or you've got the proportions of that violin slightly off Laughing . (That's assuming it's you in the pic?)

Could also be that Bill is vertically challenged you know Nick or even that he has a wardrobe dedicated to the craft. Very Happy

Welcome to the ANZLF Bill Cool

Cheers

Kim

[P Bill]

Thanks for the welcome fellas. I'm not that short it's a viola top .Matthew represents my eubs in Sydney. He is the one that got me started on my accoustic D.B. .It looks like the restoration of my uke as well . Somehow the uke looks easy now,

[Allen]

Welcome on board Bill. Great to have some diversity here. And as you can tell, we're glued to the screen waiting for Matthews update.

[matthew]

well I got my fingers glued together with the 192 extra clear and can't take any pics for you yet. But I can say the top is nearly all glued up. Next is to start on edge restoration and an inlay patch in the middle.

[ckngumbo]

Thanks for the welcome fellas. I'm not that short it's a viola top .Matthew represents my eubs in Sydney. He is the one that got me started on my accoustic D.B. .It looks like the restoration of my uke as well . Somehow the uke looks easy now,

Whew! I was afraid that it was a viola

[matthew]

little update

You can see how worn the corners were here:





After gluing most of the belly cracks (I found a few more) I had a go at repairing the corners with the nice repair wood I got from Martin, but i wasn't happy with the result, as the grain really didn't match. The grain on this bass top is very wide at the flanks, and wavy. So I tried using a reed-by-reed technique i discovered online a week ago.

I cut away a part of the damaged wood along the grain line, then glued in a single piece of wide grain spruce. Then trimmed it back, and then added another.







This last picture is only a little larger than lifesize. The grain is about 5-6mm



I'm working from the back here but i check the front to make sure the grain lines are reasonably straight. They will be covered in a dark varnish, but with purfling repaired they will look much better.

I addition, these corners - and a lot of the edges - will get a half-edging repair. so what you see above will be covered with perhaps 2-3mm of tighter grained spruce, which will be better for gluing to the blocks!

[Nick]

It's funny how things work Matthew, here was me thinking yesterday "I wonder how Matthew's bass project was coming along" & today you post! Weird. Good technique with the patches too, you can pretty much make the patch grain lines any width needed doing it this way.

[matthew]

As it happens ... in case anyone likes to watch.

This is a previous repair to the block area of the lower bout



However, cracks have developed along one side and i don't like the previous repair or the nail holes so I'm removing the old repair and replacing with new wood.



I've removed all but the last 2mm of the top wood and tapered the edges inwards so that the patch fits tightly and the repair edge doesn't align with any grain. I've lost a bit of the very brittle purfling near the saddle but this was falling away anyway.



That's the patch glued in. Still has to be planed flat.

There was a similar problem up the top end. 2" nails through the top had made a nasty mess and a fair bit of wood had come away when removing the top from the block. And a previous repair. You can see my first exploratory gouge to see whether I could do an inlay patch, but nup. Had to go further to make sure the repair was sound.



I had to remove only enough spruce till I got to reasonably sound wood. I filled the nail holes with sawdust and hide glue from the back; i'll do a better repair from the front, later.



here's the patch glued in, waiting to be trimmed back.



This is what nails do to the edge! I've planed back the crumbly chipped edge back to clean wood.



closer, you can see what this spruce is like. Wavy, wide-grained, with a few brittle knotty bits at the flanks like this



or this bit of repeated trauma which has pulverised the spruce under the varnish. I have to plane back as far as i dare then do the rest with glue and new spruce edging.



This new spruce is much nicer to deal with and will properly strengthen the original edges. It will glue better, too.

[Stephen Kinnaird]

This is so inspiring. In the lutherie world, I've always thought that the repairmen were the true heroes. You are validating that opinion!

Steve

[Allen]

Great to watch Matthew. Do you get to a spot that you need to sit back and have a good long think about how you will tackle the repair. Those ones would have me pacing the shed pondering my next course of action.

[matthew]

I work in short bursts, and so i have a lot of thinking time. yes I do walk around and around sometimes. For that last top block repair I even used a router ...

[rocket]

That's absolutely fantastic Mathew " a wealth of knowledge being shared here, i'm sure everyone apreciates that you've taken the time to show in detail how you're going about this repair. Cheers Rod.

[matthew]

Happy to share ... but I'm not showing you everything

[John Steele]

This just keeps getting even better and better. Thanks for taking the time to post your progress. Great solutions. And the color of that old spruce is pretty amazing.
We're all behind ya!

[kiwigeo]

I work in short bursts, and so i have a lot of thinking time. yes I do walk around and around sometimes. For that last top block repair I even used a router ...

Took the liberty of fixing a coding error in your post Matthew.

Cheers Martin

[matthew]

bastard

[rocket]

Thanks Martin, i thought it said CNC, glad you cleared that up!!

[Nick]

Loving this Matthew & my hat is off to a very skilled craftsmen.

[matthew]

Father's Day ... bacon and eggs for breakfast ... and a day in the workshop!

---

Here's another reason I feel the half edging is necessary on this plate:



The wood is brittle and knotty in spots all around the edges; this is a weak point, has cracked before, and even to plane it down I need to wet it down and use a very sharp blade. LOVING the new HNT Gordon!

Here it is after thinning the edge carefully, with (I think) a piece of the famous arsewipe kermode spruce, ready for patching. Other than the staining, it's fine repair wood!



You never have too many clamps.



After the hide glue has dried, the edges are carefully trimmed and blended into the original top shape, and then thinned to the original 8mm. Sounds easy, eh!







I like this shot:





This is where we started:



Next job is the soundpost patch.

[Lillian]

Well I'll be... Matthew, you are human. I always wondered if you weren't 2 foot tall with pointy ears.

Lets face it, the work you are doing is magical.

Thanks for sharing.

[Allen]

Has the entire perimeter got a new layer of spruce now?

[Pete Howlett]

I am speechless!

[matthew]

yes in the end I replaced the entire perimeter with a new gluing surface. Do it once, do it well.