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Updated: May 24, 2025
The most usual method pursued in England and Germany is that of sawing the head off at a part below the end of the shell and then chiselling a level passage so far as a straight surface makes it necessary along the floor of the peg-box. The sides are treated in the same way but the width across diminishes as they proceed upward.
The superficial area of the interior walls of this part of the peg-box being much greater, the thickness ditto, there is seldom a necessity for fitting a block of wood in the manner before mentioned, unless as sometimes it is found, the part has been so worm-eaten as to be too weak for its work of supporting the pegs and sustaining the strain of the strings.
For this operation the cut out space referred to close by, if not covering the peg-hole, will have to be repeated on the opposite side with great exactness, so as to allow of a single fitting up and filling the intermediate space, the grain running as described before, and which will therefore be when placed in position with the end of the grain towards the spectator looking towards the front of the peg-box.
There will now be necessary the marking off a part on the graft that shall represent the thickness of the nut or the distance between the end of the fingerboard and the peg-box opening; the breadth across, or we may call it the length of the upper part of the nut, will be exactly that of and at the part where the opening will be made in the peg-box for the reception of the graft.
The opposite hole to be used for the same peg must be made and treated in the same manner. Some repairers, for economy of time, would make a fresh enlargement right through the two opposite holes and push the rod through both and glueing same at one process, cutting it away from the interior of the peg-box when the glue has hardened, but this is risky work.
Afterwards I mark the three-sixteenths for cheeks of peg-box. That of the volutes is my first business.
Fixing the wood now, face downwards on the bench, I begin the cutting of the fluting at the upper part, using gouges 57, 24, 22, just in the order in which I write them, obviously the terminal part being that which needs most attention and care. Reversing the wood, I cut down by the nose of the head to the broad grooves which soon appear, terminating just over the narrow end of peg-box.
To them one sort of curled heading to the peg-box is as good as another, if strong enough, the whole of this part of the mechanism being simply dedicated to the winding up of unwilling "catgut." The old masters, their pupils, and modern imitators, have thought otherwise and treated this portion of the structure as that in which they could concentrate much of their best artistic talent.
This divided equally and marked on the wood of the new graft each side of the central line will give the narrowest width of the part to be inserted in the peg-box. The outside may be then removed by the saw vertically.
Care must be taken that the rounding commences underneath, a little away from the part that will be fitted into the peg-box. This of course must be according to measurement or template kept for the purpose if graftings are likely to be wanted in the future.
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