Fixing Masakichi No.3010

February 2006
I was wondering how can I fix the Masakichi No.3010. This kind of fixing seemed pretty difficult. One day I tried to push ribs (end pin area) by my hands, but they didn’t move even 1mm. I felt it was impossible to push and glue at the same time just by human hands. So I tried to invent one fixing tool.
At first put a kind of pad on each lower corners of the violin, and using long metal screws and butterfly nuts, it can push ribs back inside of sound box. Sorry for the poor drawing, because I don’t have this tool anymore. I already threw ay such a useless tool ^^;)

As you can see in this drawing, by screwing the lower wood plate pushes back ribs and lower block which were completely sticking out of sound box.
According to my plan, this seemed perfect solution. I made this tool immediately, and tried.

At first put two pads on each corner and get ready to turn butterfly nuts … but even this first set up was already difficult. Corners are pretty slippery how many times I tried to set up tool, it went off from the violin. It waaaas frustrating! I had to try many times…
Finally I could set up this somehow and started to turn nuts and screws…
It was supposed to go back to inside of body, but the reality was not! The ribs went back into the body little bit (about few mm)but after that it didn’t move at all. How much I turn up screws, it didn’t move anymore...and I was anxious if I did too much, it might break around corners. So I gave up and glued block and back. Well, this picture is after the fixing… I don’t have the picture of before the fixing, unfortunately.

Even though it ’s still little bit sticking out of the body, it’s muuuch better than before.
Then, how about the sound??? For me, there was not much difference before and after..hehehe. It might be because of players skill and ability of hearing nice tones though. ^^;)

Fixing the Masakichi violin

After I received the Masakichi No.A, I played a lot even though it had big split between back and ribs. Since my violin teacher recommended to close this big split, I was considering how to fix it. But At that time, I had almost no tools, even any clamps. So I had no idea how to fix this kind of thing.

I looked for an information about making and fixing violin. I found that fixers use kind of special glue for stringed instruments. The glue is not chemical product, but made from skin and bones of rabbit( it sounds bad, but this is really groval standard glue for luthiers). So I bought this special glue(it ’s called "NIKAWA" in Japanese).

And one more necessary thing was clamps. I didn’t know what kind of clamp is best for this, but I found a picture of special clamp to close sound box of violin on inter-net. This is actually sold at one internet shop. But it ’s kind of expensive!

So I decided to make this by myself. It seemed pretty simple and easy to make.
I bought cheap board and cut it into nice curved plates to fit the curve of violins lower and upper bouts. I couldn’t find nice hand screw like we can see in the picture, so I used 45mm long screws and butterfly type nut which I can screw by hand. But these screws were too heavy, because they had 10mm of diameter! Hihihi! It was silly to choose such thing for this. Mine was not sofisticated at all!!

Anyway I made my first fixing tool by myself. Unfortunately I already threw away it long ago, so I don’t have a picture of it.
C’est dommage… by using this pretty ugly tool, I could close the sound box successfully^^)
But the glue was kind of too thick! Hehehe! After drying it became thick white film on ribs.

Anyway, how was the sound after that? The player was feeling it’s little bit better than before, but actually he couldn’t feel much difference of it! Hehehe!