La Folia

I think there are some considerations that are being missed. There could be a mechanical advantage when turning small pegs, but would it help in practice? If you have to wrap two layers of string on the peg instead of one, there goes your mechanical advantage. I don't want to have to shorten my strings to make this work. It seems like a good idea, but I would have to see it. I don't think that there is a wear advantage. There might be a torque advantage when tuning, but the force on the peg hole is determined mainly by the string tension. The pressure on the hole is also higher with the small shaft, and this might cause increased wear. Isn't the usual practice to start with the small end of the conical shaft and work inward as the peg wears and wood is cut? I don't see any reason to change that. I think it's much more important to ensure that the pegs and holes are exactly round, and tapered correctly, however that may be. If the pegs are perfectly made, they will be easy to tune regardless of diameter. Hardanger pegs are already small. They have to be, because there are so many of them. The problem isn't the size. The problem is that I have never seen a round peg or a round hole on a Hardanger fiddle, and that's really interesting when you are tuning steel understrings. In addition, the pegs may have been made from softer wood with a non-circular wear pattern. In contrast, I have seen a few violins that actually have round pegs. Not all, but some of them.

It will do that too, and of course so will Gimp. But use what you have and are comfortable with.

Analyze > Set Scale...

Gimp is free and open-source. It is indeed excellent for photo editing, but ImageJ is better for measuring. ImageJ was designed for scientific image processing and making measurements. It is a free, open-source program that is available from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Why did you cross out your work and apologize? I'm pretty sure you got it exactly right the first time, except for the two letters that are covered. I do guess it is RIGART.

Silicone This is silicone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone This is silicon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon

You have to log in first.

Indeed. I have pegs that were cut by beavers.

Carl Becker and Son

I once found a real nice piece in a pile of firewood. I thought about it for a while, but when I went back, someone else had nabbed it. It's probably just as well. Maybe they could make better use of it than I would have.

I would not reuse that under any circumstances. It could easily break and cause a lot of damage. As a matter of fact, that actually happened to me once. Someone handed me an old viola for my opinion. It was tuned down, but the strings looked good enough. When I tuned it up and started to play, the gut broke and the tailpiece hit the top and cracked it.

A temperature change could drastically change the relative humidity and the hair length.

Gosh, I just had another look at this poor thing. There are definitely some cracks. I think BOTH blocks are cattywumpus. Contrary to what I wrote, the top DOES have some wood spliced in at an odd angle. And the open seam in the back requires expert attention. It looks as if it may have had an amateur repair attempt, with oddball glue added, which would require extra work to undo. I think it needs major repairs. Both blocks and both plates. I think repairing both plates adds to the complexity. Whatever you do, don't try any of the repairs yourself unless you are an expert.

It looks to me like the top is sinking rather dramatically.