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Saturday, January 23, 2016

Fitting tuners and stringing up

This is the cherry piccolo I started in December. I finished the French polish before nipping off to Buenos Aires, so this morning it was ready to rub out. I made the bone nut and here are the steps of fitting the violin peg tuners. 

All the tools are at the ready. 


First I shape the pegs in the shaper. It's a lot more than the pencil sharpener that popped up in your head. I sharpened the blade on a few waterstones and it's razor sharp. This gives a circular section in the entire length, and the correct taper to match my reamer. Both came from Metropolitan Music, a fine webshop. 


Here's the grim reamer. I check for square by eye. 


I shoot for something like this, where the topmost pegs sit deeper. It goes well with the taper of the body. 


All pegs protrude to the same height fanx to my depth stop. Before I put the leather guard on there was a lot of thumb blood to wipe off. 


I round off the ends with a file, and drill the string holes with a mini drill that some folks call a pin vise. All tuners must be set in the same direction. 


The holes are countersunk with a tiny ball router bit that I turn by hand. 


Here are the strings I currently use - fluorocarbon fishing leader off of ebay. 


I feed the string through the bridge, fish it out of the soundhole, put on a magic bead and tie a knot. 


Done, and sounding reet nice!


And the headstock stamp, for those of you keeping count. 










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