Hourglass violin repair

We’ve had an interesting shaped violin here this week, often referred to an ‘hourglass’. Stradivarious made one in the 1700s and afterwards there were many copies. Our customer’s violin is German, dated around 1860 and came in for repairs as the neck was coming out.

See pictures of the repair process, it involved removing the back and refitting the top block. This is an unusual measure but necessary to improve the final elevation of the violin (the angle of the fingerboard).

After refitting the top block, we used a sash clamp to glue the ribs back to the body.

The whole repair took around 25 hours and our customer was delighted with the results.