MIMF

I'm no expert on identification of guitars, but I own a Supertone banjo, and the inlays and fretboard wear are remarkably similar.

Welcome to the Forum, Alessandro! We have a whole section on Bowed Instruments for discussing violins, etc.

You might also look in our Library of archived discussions. One of our former staff members was a professional brass and woodwind repair expert for the Army, but he unfortunately not around this board any more. We have a lot of archived discussions on band instrument repair. One thing I found in the...

Is your 32" length the whole instrument, or just between the bridges (the metal rods across the top and bottom)? You need the distance between the rods. To figure out the string gauges, the most obvious first choice is to measure the strings that are on there, if you have a caliper. If you can measu...

Welcome to the Forum, Peter! Very similar to some old German hummels. Most modern instruments use square tuning pegs. I don't know anyone who makes these flat ones. You might have to take a hammer to the end of a screw and make your own. The strings, at least over the fretboard, would be very simila...

Duck Duck Go is a search engine, not a browser. It may be what he has set for his home page, but that will not affect the MIMF search engine. Safari, Chrome/Chromium, or Firefox should all work equally well on a Mac for the browser.

Both work for me, and are reasonably quick. Firefox pops up a security dialog: "The information you have entered on this page will be sent over an insecure connection and could be read by a third party. Are you sure you want to send this information?" and I have to confirm before it will search on e...

I use a router for making recesses for door hinges. That's about it. For me, they only let me screw up 50x faster. The only time I have used a router on an instrument was using a Dremel with router base for cutting binding channels. Even then, it helped to pre-score by hand to limit tearout. But I b...

A number of our members, including me, have built these as well. What style of bracing did you use? Any interior pictures? This is a builders' forum, so everyone is interested in construction details. Please feel free to share parts of the build process as well.

It has always supposed to have been 30 minutes for editing. Maybe it was broken before.

Nice job, Peter!

Hi Matt, we just had a major upgrade on the software that runs the Forum, and unfortunately the Donate button got lost in the process. We are working on restoring it and the button should return soon. Thanks for your patience.

I got a Fantronics wired USB endoscope (also from Amazon, but currently $21) for Christmas. It is about 8 mm in diameter, has adjustable 8-LED lighting, and has a long semi-rigid cable, so it is maneuverable, but doesn't flop around. I just hook it to a laptop, but apparently it will also plug into ...

Peter, I did an almost identical repair and documented it here nearly 20 years ago. Simply sliced off the bad part and attached a new head. I did have to buy new tuners, but the wood was scrap - cheap repair. First time I'd ever done anything like that, and it turned out great. Have a look: http://w...

Officially, build questions belong here and repair questions belong in Repairs, but we realize at times the lines are blurry. You will probably get a better response here because of the instrument-specific knowledge required.

The software that runs the forum was updated a few days ago after it hadn't been updated in a while. The active topics are still showing up color coded for me, but the old icons have disappeared and the color change is subtle. I have heard the old icons and style may come back as the update progress...

That is the standard version. I use an adjustable one like this: https://internationalviolin.com/ProductDetail/t39_peg-shaper-adjustable-violin--viola that can be adjusted to handle pegs from smaller violin to viola size. There is a separate model which handles cello-sized pegs. Both versions work f...

The internal helical cutters of that type of pencil sharpener are usually fixed, and are way too steep of an angle for instrument makers. You would have to pull out the internal mechanism to see if there is any way to change the angle of the cutters. Barry, by 90 degrees do you mean perpendicular or...

I have always had good luck with https://internationalviolin.com (and they happen to be local to me). I had a quick look and saw 1/8 and 1/16 size pegs, but I didn't look very hard. My guess is the 1/8 pegs would work fine.

The forum software was confused because the links did not point at actual images. I changed the OP's image links to URLs, and the links now work, but be forewarned it will not show you the images unless you are logged into Google's services. It would be better to attach the actual photos here instea...