French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

Back to purfling repairs. Here are the main tools I use:



The job is exceedingly tedious and performed under a powerful magnifier; the original purfling is very brittle and has to be cut back to a suitable point, then the new beesting is cut following the original purfling lines ... and guessing a bit too.



This is the first one I did, and I changed the way I do the scarf joints after this one. But it's OK.





This is more like dentistry than luthiery!

It is difficult to match the edges of the purfling invisibly, even using a scarf joint. In this next corner I decided to make the joint in the purfling coincide with the grain lines; one is almost a butt, the other is a longish scarf.




I think, under varnish, all these repairs will be virtually invisible.

Ah the varnish. How the hell am I going to save the varnish? That's another problem.