In this episode, we continue to work on the front of the Booth double bass. We are now fitting cleats to cover and support the various cracks on the front. This double bass is in pretty good condition; however, you will expect a good number of cracks to the front with any double bass of this age. In a violin, it is quite possible that there has never been a crack, but the double bass's size and the amount of pressure they are put under cracks on old double basses is a guarantee.
Firstly we remove the old cleats, many of which are poorly fitted and made of the wrong wood. We do not always remove all cleats, but we never leave anything behind that we are not happy with. The area where the cleats have been removed from are then carefully cleaned and prepared for the new cleats to be fitted.
We then use soft and light wood for these as they do not need to support the front as we have done with the patches, and they only need to be strong enough to cover and support any cracks. Some of the cleats are fitted using some specially made sandpaper that is adhesive on the back, which means we can stick it to the front and use the shape to fit the cleats. In most cases, we will use a plane or chisel to get the cleats to the right fit.
There is no fixed size of cleats, and you will see that we use a wide variety of them in different shapes and sizes. The idea is to only do as much as is needed. Once the cleats are fitted, they are glued in place with hide glue, and then warm water is used to clean off any excess glue.
Music: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston - www.gardnermuseum.org
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