Violin peg hole reamer

[Mr T]

I am currently making a mandora, a medieval style mandolin, and need a violin peg hole reamer 1:30. On the internet they are either about £15 or £50. Does anyone have experience of these, do the cheap ones do the job properly or should I bite the bullet and get the expensive, bearing in mind I will only be using it once in a blue moon.

Chris

 

[Racers]

I made a tapered reamer that uses an old square blade as a blade.
Turn a taper to the right taper cut a slot and make a blade from an old saw, shouldn't cost you anything.

Tapered ream and tenon cutter by Pete Maddex, on Flickr

Pete

 

[Mr T]

Thanks for the input Pete. This reamer will be working holes 6-10mm dia so it would be difficult to make one of your style to fit.

Chris

 

[bugbear]

I am currently making a mandora, a medieval style mandolin, and need a violin peg hole reamer 1:30. On the internet they are either about £15 or £50. Does anyone have experience of these, do the cheap ones do the job properly or should I bite the bullet and get the expensive, bearing in mind I will only be using it once in a blue moon.

Chris

It sounds like an ideal item to borrow/share.

BugBear

 

[MusicMan]

Chris

That sort of reamer is used commonly for quite small holes and sockets in woodwind instruments. It should work fine for violin peg holes of the size you mention. It can be either double sided or single sided.

Keith

 

[whiskywill]

Good old Aliexpress has one for £8.62 including delivery. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Violin- ... autifyAB=4

 

[JohnPW]

I bought a cheap one from Ebay (a few years ago when they were't as cheap as they are now!) and I've also used a much more expensive Herdim reamer.

I've only used them a bit, my impression is the cheaper one is less sharp, but still sharp enough. In any case the final finish of the hole is acheived by burnishing turning the reamer backwards (anti-clockwise).

I think what is more important is how accurate they are, but I haven't checked them for that.

You should get one with only a few cutting flutes, ie the flutes don't go all around the reamer, they're better for making a round hole.

 

[xy mosian]

Way back, in the seventies, crikey 40 yrs ago, I made a couple of Lutes. These had open five sided peg boxes. Of course there was no internet, non that I had access to at least, for gathering information or finding possible suppliers of such reamers. My solution was to drill near sized holes then taper them by wrapping sandpaper, or garnet paper, around the peg and grinding the hole to fit.
There was a feeling around, amongst makers, that if the small end of the peg was too tight a fit in the pegbox. Then it was possible to split the peg along it's length as twisting, for tuning, was applied. For that reason my exit hole, for the peg, was a parallel clearance hole. I never had a peg slip, but that may have been due to the chalk and soap.

Good luck with your build, xy

 

[profchris]

I've installed violin pegs on ukuleles using a taper pin reamer (near as dammit the same taper). But accuracy of fit it quite hard with a straight fluted reamer.

Spiral reamers are better, this is the cheapest I can find:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Spiral- ... 89001.html

But do check that it will match your planned peg sizes, as the shallow taper means you need about 4 different reamers to cover all violins, violas and cellos!

A straight fluted reamer works, as do home made ones, but the best achievable is "just about good enough to hold tune". Really well fitted pegs are easy to use, players get fed up with pegs which are hard to tune.

 

[profchris]

I forgot to ask, will your mandora have metal or nylon/gut strings? If metal you really need the spiral reamer, because the lower elasticity of metal means you have to make and hold finer tuning measurements.

If metal, also consider using narrower pegs, maybe 1/4 size, because these allow finer tuning.

 

[Mr T]

Thanks for the input gentlemen, that's been very useful. The reason I asked the question is that I guess the fit of the pegs will be one of the critical parts of the instrument, as it has a short string length I'm told tuning with pegs could be tricky. I haven't decided whether to use nylon or steel strings, any advice?

I made a violin about thirty years ago, I think I borrowed the peg hole reamer from someone. I started the mandora about twenty five years back but things intervened and I've only picked it up again in the past few months. I'm tone deaf and can't play an instrument but like making them.

Chris

 

[thick_mike]

Fine tuning on violins is usually done with a fine tuner gizmo on the tailpiece isn’t it?

 

[profchris]

Thanks for the input gentlemen, that's been very useful. The reason I asked the question is that I guess the fit of the pegs will be one of the critical parts of the instrument, as it has a short string length I'm told tuning with pegs could be tricky. I haven't decided whether to use nylon or steel strings, any advice?

I made a violin about thirty years ago, I think I borrowed the peg hole reamer from someone. I started the mandora about twenty five years back but things intervened and I've only picked it up again in the past few months. I'm tone deaf and can't play an instrument but like making them.

Chris

I think it makes a difference what kind of mandora you plan. Wikipedia tells me that the usual mandora was a bass lute, scale length around 700mm, while the Scottish mandora was mandolin scale, 320 mm. Both were gut strung, not steel.

Wooden pegs will work for either (Aquila Nylgut strings would be closest to authentic, and they make mandolin tuning sets). But you're right that a good fit is important. You could always ask a violin repair shop to fit the pegs,it's not a long job.

For the 320mm scale I'd use 1/8 size or even 1/16. Both will hold at that scale. But they will be a lot thinner than 10 mm tapering down - more like 5 or 6 mm. For the 700 mm scale I'd go up a size. I used 1/4 pegs on some ukes (330mm scale or so) and the tuning was very coarse - 1/8 was fine, and if I did it again I'd try 1/16.

 

[Mr T]

Thanks for the information Professor. It's the small version I'm making. I've drilled the peg holes at 6mm so have the option of slimmer pegs. What do you men by the tuning being course?

Chris

 

[profchris]

By coarse tuning I meant the amount you have to turn the peg to raise or lower the tuning of the string. Suppose a thin peg, where you need to rotate it by 10 degrees (1/36 of a turn) to bring the string up to the correct note. That's a pretty small movement but manageable. If the peg were twice the diameter, you would need to turn it only 5 degrees, i.e. 1/72 of a turn - that's much harder for the player to achieve. If wooden pegs are not well fitted they tend to jump position, which leaves the player overshooting and undershooting until they hit the right note (if they can get there at all).

Steel strings require less movement for the same change in tuning, which is why steel stringed instruments usually have geared tuners to allow fine adjustment. On a violin, the fine adjusters at the tailpiece are usually only on the steel strings, for just that reason.

 

[Mr T]

Thanks for the advice professor it's very useful. May I PM you for advice in future as I get further on with the Madnora?

Chris

 

[profchris]

Thanks for the advice professor it's very useful. May I PM you for advice in future as I get further on with the Madnora?

Chris

Feel free. Though I've never built a mandolin or mandora. But with "gut" strings there will be similarities with ukes and I've built quite a few of those.

Or even ask in this thread or a new one - there are quite a few here who build instruments and much of what you're doing will use interesting techniques for other woodworkers. I'm guessing this is a stave bowlback? If so we'll all be fascinated to see that being constructed!

 

[Jacob]

Early Music Shop might have the very thing, if not they'd certainly advise you. http://www.earlymusicshop.com/

Who is Mad Nora?

 

[DigitalM]

The reason I asked the question is that I guess the fit of the pegs will be one of the critical parts of the instrument, as it has a short string length I'm told tuning with pegs could be tricky.
Chris

I have a flamenco guitar with pegs and no violin-like fine tuning, and I guess it's not that much bigger than your Mandora. Tuning it is a skill that takes a little time to master, but ends up being a fairly trivial. It's a more two handed affair than with geared tuners. You have to sit with the instrument balanced on your lap, hold the headstock with one hand and turn the peg with the other. On a geared instrument you don't need to brace the instrument in this way, the pegged instrument wants to simply unwind as you move it so you have to brace for it.

One thing that great helps is a product that used to be sold by Hill and Sons with a very long name "A preparation to help ease the movement of wooden pegs" or some such, which all my violinist friends merely referred to as "peg s**t". I've no idea if they still make it, no doubt there are alternatives!