MENC Forums

Pegs that fit property rarely "pop" loose.  It does happen most this time of the year,  when the heating comes on the and humidity decreases as a result.

Pegs and the holes into which they fit do change over time.  The scroll is made of maple, a hard wood, but not as hard as ebony from which pegs are made.  They expand, contract and wear in different ways.  Both parts tend to expand and contract in asymetrical ways because they take on or loose moisture along the grain lines of the wood.  During certain times of the year, pegs and holes will be slightly off-round-- more oval.  This variation is hard to notice with the naked eye, but it's enough to make a difference.

There is no substitute for periodic checkups by a trained and skilled luthier.  What the luthier does is to put a reamer in the hole to make the hole perfectly round.  This may entail a miniscule removal of wood.  Then the peg is run through a shaper-- a tool that resembles a manual pencil sharpener.  Again, a tiny shaving of the irregularities will take place.  The taper of the peg and of the hole must match exactly.  Removal of too much wood from the peg or hole will mean that the peg will sit much deeper in the hole.  This will mean the head of the peg will not stand out from the wall of the pegbox and the hole in the peg itself will no longer be centered within the pegbox, making putting on a string difficult.  The hole in the peg can be redrilled if necessary, but a peg that rides too close to the wall will need to be replaced.

It will take a few bucks to get the pegs to fit right, so do it right.  Brute force applied to ill-fitting pegs is not only a nuisance but a risk.  More than once in my life, I have seen cracks in the pegbox caused by excessive force.  That requires a really expensive repair.

Visit your local violin shop for the only permanent remedy.

Gabriel Villasurda
Ann Arbor MI

Do you replace all of the strings when you re-wrap them?  Also weather has been rather unpredictable out here these last few weeks and the temperature in my room has been inconsistent as well.  Is that why there are SO many kids with instruments that are just SO out of tune lately?  I feel like I practically spend half of my class period tuning and retuning instruments.

what I do with my student instruments is when they break a string and I replace it, I use a bit of super-fine sandpaper (like 1200 grit) on the peg, just enough to take off the "glaze" that is on there, and apply some of the peg compound (looks like lipstick) onto the peg.  Then I put the new string on and things are good to go.  I do this every time I change a string and have noticed that I don't have those problems nearly as much.  The glaze buildup is the problem, in my opinion.