Fiddle repairs and flatfooting visitors

Editor ♦ November 23, 2011 ♦ Leave Your Comment

It all began with an email that I never received ….

A couple of weeks ago, Ira Bernstein and Riley Baugus were on their way over from the USA for their annual tour. Their popular Appalachian Roots show combines Riley’s old time banjo playing with Ira’s traditional Appalachian clogging and flatfooting, and they both play fiddle too. Just before they left the States, Ira discovered that he had problems with his fiddle:  the centre joint of the back was coming apart. There was no time to get it fixed before he left, so Ira sent me an email asking if I could fix it. I never got this email, but luckily he had also emailed Sue Coe, who got in touch and filled me in with the details.

When a very jet-lagged Ira turned up at my house shortly afterwards, I had a good look at the fiddle. There was no way of repairing it without taking off the belly and this work would take some time to do. Ira and Riley were off on tour the following day, so I decided to loan Ira my Bridge “Woodstock” fiddle whilst I worked on his. The show must go on! To make things easier for him, I set this fiddle up with the same string heights as his own instrument. I also copied the curve of the bridge on Ira’s fiddle on to a new bridge, which I fitted on the Woodstock fiddle.  

Back to the main job of repairing Ira’s fiddle. I re-glued and studded the back joint and I noticed that some previous repairs had not been done properly. The fiddle had a sound post crack to the belly but there was no patch fitted. I fitted a sound post patch and a new sound post. I tidied up the instrument and set it up with Ira’s original bridge. 

Ira and Riley had a few gigs followed by a couple of days off. So they headed back up north and stayed with Pete and Sue Coe in Ripponden, just a few miles from my house (Pete and Sue help to run the brilliant Ryburn 3 Step organisation which promotes traditional music, song and dance of all kinds). Ira came over and picked up his fiddle and we played some music together. As well as being good fun, I needed him to play the instrument so that I could make some final adjustments. Ira was very pleased with the work I did on his fiddle. I went to see the Appalachian Roots show at The Square Chapel in Halifax, West Yorks and thoroughly enjoyed it – especially the bit where Ira advertised my skills as a luthier!