Knut K. Steintjønndalen, 1955
This fiddle was brought to me with an ugly crack. It had been open for years, considerable varnish was missing around it, and the wood was dirty and distorted.
As I began to work on it, more problems were revealed. The fiddle had been worked on badly in the past: The end-button had been glued in. There was thick white glue around the crack. And there was considerable wood missing near the edges, presumably from some previous opening of the instrument.
The bass bar had been glued in (clearly by the maker) badly enough that the top was distorted. And one of the corner blocks was too short.
I decided to take out the bass bar and press out the distortion in the top - a major operation.
Click on the picture for a closer look.
The top ready to glue back on, with new patches, cleats, and bass bar. This is a three-piece top: there are two joints, along the two rows of cleats. The smaller darker ones above the sound hole on the treble side are original. The rest are mine.
A patch filling in missing wood.
The new bass bar
Anund Roheim had something to do with this instrument.
The label
The slightly darker wood running up to the edge, about midway between the line of cleats, fills in wood that was missing, presumably from when the
instrument was opened before.
The too-short corner block. I decided to leave this alone.