Thursday, January 29, 2009

Pipa Restoration 7. How to Repair a Tuning Peg

  • The tuning peg had been snapped into two pieces, and rebuilding one from scratch was out of the question. The wood looked like ebony, but not as oily. First, I superglued both parts together. While a firm bond was made, I wouldn't expect it to survive the rigors of use.












  • I carefully drilled two 0.25" holes through the bonded seam. Here I have a piece of sandpaper to roughen the bore.












  • Switching to aliphatic resin wood glue the holes were doweled. I surprised myself by not breaking the superglue joint when pushing in the dowels.













  • Hard to see it here, but the peg is in place after sanding the dowels smooth. The connection is bombproof and the peg is as good as new. I didn't try to mask this repair because the friction peg is an area of high abrasion.

3 comments:

antonino said...

I have aquired an old pipa. Rescued from an old music shop. Completly unplayed and in good condition. One tuning peg is missing need to replace, or aquire a new set. Any suggestions?

Gypsyboy said...

Is this project on-going? I am considering building a pipa from scratch and am looking for any kind of information about them that I can find.

Anonymous said...

Wondered if you had template or spacing for the frets on the sound board?