Thought I would share a useful little shop built tool I used to repair a seam separation in a Loar era F-4 I had in the shop a few months ago. I got the idea for this from my old friend, Larry Cohea, who is a long time luthier in the San Francisco bay area and considered one of the "go to" repair guys for vintage instruments in that region. I cut a couple of ell shaped pieces out of some scrap curly maple, glued some leather onto the bottom surfaces, drilled small holes through the bottoms which lined up with the string hole in an old guitar tuner shaft from the tuner that was attached to the side. The way it works is by inserting a very small guitar (or better yet a mandolin) string through the crack and bringing it out through the sound hole. A cleat with a predrilled hole is slid onto the string followed by stringing a ball end off of a guitar string, then tying a knot in the wire to hold it all together. A bit of Titebond is then placed on the inside surface of the cleat and the whole shebang is pulled up snug on the inside surface of the repair. The string is then cut off a couple of inches above the top surface and inserted into the little clamping device string winder just far enough to get it to wind easily and wound up to where you have a good clamp. The repair on this instrument required two cleats so I used both clamping tools simultaneously. I removed the tools the next day and wicked HHG into the seam for some added insurance. Later I did a little cosmetic touchup and blended it all in with a few wipes of Truoil.
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