Re-cleating this?

[polkat]

This is the bass side lower bout of an old Shraphine copy I was given many years ago. I had it in another post about something else. I was just beginning violin repair when I got it, and did the best I could. Lately, one of the old cracks have begun to rattle a bit. I can see a tiny bit of movement in it, but the cleated area is holding strong! I was advised here on Maestronet to clean everything off and start again. This came to me with the area shown broken clean off in 4 pieces. The story was that a horse stepped on it (No, I have no idea how a violin came to be under a horses hoof!). The bigger cleats actually cover two cracks maybe 1/4" apart (one not visable to the right of the visable one). yes, the cleats are ugly, but they are holding. The plate as a whole is quite strong and flexiable.

So, how would folks here approach redoing these repairs? A luthier friend locally told me to just fix whatever new I can find and leave the rest alone. make any sense?

[FiddleDoug]

I would have a tendency to redo the repairs. Those are pretty ugly looking cleats. Can't tell about all that's going on there.

[iburkard]

It looks like you're going to need to double the damaged edges. There are so many cracks running to the edge of the plates, even on the f is in trouble.

I would probably go after the long cleats first... replace them, and then move on to the smaller ones, and then go about doubling. I'm not sure what the very tiny centerline bits are doing.

If you want to close the cracks up better this time, you may want to invest in better 'telescoping' centerline clamps (edit - or if you're in a pinch, you can use two spool clamps on each side of the crack, and pull the two clamps together by using another small clamp positioned close to the surface of the violin to prevent/reduce bowing during pulling.)