Violin 4

This is one of two violins that I purchased late January of 2025. I have been keeping my eye out for cheap violins that I could possibly get practice doing repiars. It also came with 3 violin bows so I have some to practice rehairing on.

Even though this is called “violin 4”, it isn’t actually the “fourth” violin that I have purchased/worked on. There isn’t a label on the inside so I can’t actually name it.

Both violins, on a quick inspection didn’t have any cracks to repair. I could say that I am happy about it but also, it means less experience points to get out of it.

This violin’s top plate was covered a lot of rosin. I had to do some research on what people are using to clean off the accumulated rosin and the two things came up a lot: soap and warm water and Simple Green. I went out to buy some Simple Green and it is working. Need to work it but it is definitely better than it was before.

I had to remove and reglue the fingerboard as it was glued off centred on the neck. After getting the fingerboard back on, I saw that the alignment of the neck was way off which is probably why the fingerboard was glued on the way it was. It is possible that the fingerboard wasn’t the original one on the violin as it is a little oversized for the neck profile. I did have to take it down along the sides to make it more even.

It took a few days but I managed to get the neck off. I had to watch a couple of videos and did some reading to make sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I think sharpening my separating knife helped in getting the neck off.

With the neck off, I used the Hubert violin work station jig to line up the neck to the body. Luckily, I purchased the highest package for the work station; it came with an alignment jig and each individual add-on part isn’t cheap even though it is just 3D printed stuff.

After getting the fingerboard back on, I had to sand the sides down as the fingerboard was obviously wider than the neck. I tried to stain the fingerboard afterwards but the sides didn’t take too well to the stain for some reason.

A new bridge was carved and upon checking the alignment of the strings, I found out that the neck was crooked. I am not sure how this happened but I had to remove the neck again to reglue it. The second attempt was much better.

With the violin strung up, I glued some new pieces of cork on a chin rest I had. I am quite pleased with how this repair turned out. The bridges are getting much better but the bow rehairing still needs some practice.