lvlagneto

You should not reuse the failed gut. I use natural gut, no problems, Gamut. Some heavy duty sewing thread knotted over and around the gut diameter about 12+ times on each end, can easily be slid up or down to lock in length. Then hot hide onto the thread or super glue, burn the gut end until the bloat meets the thread wrap, and yank down on the gut to set it into place vs the tailpiece. I've also used fine natural Gamut gut (instead of thread) for period setups. I hate nylon gut with threaded ends (at least the way most install), since the threaded metal tubes often angle down toward the top. I just had a cello with top damage caused by poor installation of a synthetic, with excess contacting the top. You can obviously trim to avoid this, or burn the ends. Many of us have purchased many a junker violin over the years... how many broken natural guts have you seen?

if only... half size instrument, not full... shaper is limited and cannot go low enough to support making a mandrel/peg for spiral application

Totally understand. In the future, I hope to have metal and plastic mandrels and forms for smaller scale spiral work.

Thank you. I'll keep an eye out for more replies/thoughts, since I'm sure there is no end to experience out there.

For spirals in the past, I've generally had luck with a very minimal bushing, sometimes using a peg and nonstick parchment to push a glued up curl into a hole. In this case, the instrument is fractional, so shaving a useful peg/mandrel is beyond my adjustable peg shaver (bottoms out). I can also make a shaper I know... just tick tock. Is there a 1:20 file around? No printers in the area, but I could ask some friends to help.

Also, I checked the imported conical bushings vs conical maple that I just made, and the density and strength is about the same. I will admit that the imported busing grain is virtually invisible. I think these bushings would be useful for peg hole placement changes or hole wear issues, but not for cracks.

I need to invest in steel or plastic mandrels to make spiral bushing creation and installation less of a mess. I don't have tooling for a ring repair, but I might have some carbon fiber rod around from another project. Personally, I think an interior cheek repair is my best bet. The violin is not terribly valuable, but it sounds so good. It's also needed for use this weekend. Another fractional instrument that we owned previously had cheek repairs. I guess it pays to leave more meat on the bone.

I had hoped that fixing the peg taper would tone down the splitting force to normal (all of the pressure appears to have been on the peg tips instead of being shared between two contact points), but it made no difference with the existing damage. Removing and adding new material/cheek seems like a fine idea, since this pegbox has shown that it desires to split as much as possible.

I purchased some "boxwood" bushings from India last year, and finally used them this year. I have a rough scenario where the treble side E hole has a split running straight down into the G. The G and D also have a weeping crack running down toward the body on the same pegbox side. The instrument is small, 1/2. I hot glued up the cracks as step one, clamped, dried. I then bushed all holes, with clamping pressure front to back on the scroll to ensure that the pegbox crack didn't open while bushing with hot glue. I slightly reshaped the pegs to ensure good contact with a standard taper, cut back the bushing, reamed, doped up the holes and pegs. The result, instantaneous cracking through the bushings with string tension/tuning, returning the violin to previous state of broken. I have maple around and can make my own bushings/classic dowel or spiral. Oddly, I've only done spiral in the past. I'm not sure if a maple dowel would have considerably more strength than the "boxwood" ones. Any advice? This scroll is not maple, made of VERY soft no-figure wood. I expected the boxwoodish bushing material to be stronger than the scroll, holding up on the smaller tip peg holes after fixing peg taper... no. I also walked the reamer away from the larger E hole crack a bit, but no luck with mm difference, the crack still found a path via the staggered busing grain. I could go larger with the bushings, but was trying to be conservative.

The best way to keep the soundpost from falling is to have it resting directly on the bass bar.

Water should hopefully free the pox. Be patient with it.

Seems likely, and that foam is also a grime holder.

Since you have access and the ability, you are now an artist and a scholar armed with truth, talent and skill.

I worked on this viola over a decade ago, supposedly "Made in Germany" according to a very boring label. Seemed late 1910-20s to me? I didn't think much about it at the time, it was quickly in and out of my life. The FB was very nice ebony, and didn't need any scraping/planing. Button was shorted during making?

Chat GPT can give you an instant result, sure. Just like it can respond to any prompt with what you want to hear. It is not an expert, proven with loss of human life due to acting on GPT prompted advice. GPT strives to give people the feeling of a correct response to get the dopamine hit that prompts engagement. It's the same as generating a visual result via stable diffusion... doesn't make you an artist or an expert. Something is not always a good replacement for nothing. Wood is not easy to identify, especially when limited to poor photos.