Fustercluck

So, the pot is warped out of shape. That's the first thing I need to address, the pot is meant to act as a resonator and the heel (metal bit the strings tie to) is attached to it. Without a true pot the instrument won't be good for much. To fix it I'd need to strip it completely. First up I removed the metal work from the back of the pot.

Then the neck. It was held on by two large coach screws. You might notice all the screws in this instrument are flat headed, that's a nod towards it's age. Crosshead screws (Frearson and Phillips varieties) weren't used till the 1930's.

Metalwork and neck removed what I had was a wooden bowl coated in something black and smelling vaguely of Stockholm tar. No idea if the odour is from the instrument or from somewhere it's been stored in the past century. I wonder what was used in paint back then..

To bend wood you need to apply a lot of steam then clamp it into the shape you want and leave it to cool. I've never done it before but you've got to start somewhere. There's lots of articles about home made steam boxes on the Internet from furniture builders and luthiers but being a beekeeper I already have a thing called an Easi-Steam which together with part of a beehive forms a steam box for cleaning frames of comb and collecting wax.

It's basically a steam generator and a metal hive roof with an attachment for the steam hose in the middle and a metal floor with a grille. You put a box of hive frames into it and a wooden eke below the box then leave it to melt the wax from the wooden frames. I didn't need the eke for this and used a small National Super for the box, after all I just wanted a bit of steam to get the wood temporarily pliable. It didn't quite go to plan.

The hide glue from days of yore melts under heat.. The hot steam effectively melted the glue. The strip of wood that made the sides began to straighten. The only reason one part of the sides stayed attacked to the pot at all was that there were a load of nails in that area. This was a fail on an impressive scale, at this point I suspect a lot of people would've given it up as a bad job. I decided to have a think on it.