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Having always wanted to fix a broken Eritrean Kirar, I naturally jumped at the opportunity when it presented itself.
It appears to be made of different pieces of wood simply glued together. There is a break between the 2nd and 3rd (or is it the 4th and 5th?) tuners where there is a glue join. On close inspection there is also minor cracking at other glue joints.
Any advice on how to repair would be greatly appreciated.
The big break.
Crack along the same join on the other side of the hole. Is this a fill with ca glue job?
I'd use Titebond on the top one, if at all possibly I'd gently pry the smaller one open a bit more and try to get titebond in there too, if not go the mighty CA.
I've never seen one of these, is it played like a harp?
From what I’ve seen it is strum. It’s tuned to a pentatonic scale and you use the fingers of your left hand to mute the unwanted notes. The thumb mutes the first or second string, the first finger mutes the third string, the second finger mutes the forth string and so on. I’m told it can also be plucked like a classical guitar. DEGAC(C octave if it has a sixth string) is the tuning with 0.012, 0.012, 0.018, 0.016, 0.012, 0.028 gauge strings.
There is a lot of tension at the break and requires a lot of force to join line the two pieces back together. Titebond was my initial thought also, but I am trying to come up with some clever way of perhaps adding some kind of thin dowel.
I'm no expert, but I'd be tempted to try and dowel the break, if it's flexible enough to bend that top arch further out of alignment without breaking it elsewhere.
Otherwise, I feel like with the right router bits you could take all the hardware off and use the original frame as a template to build a new one.
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I agree. Or you could fashion some kind of back plate, using the existing shape as a template, to give it more rigidity.
1+ on using titebond and dowels.
It looks like it it broke along the grain. Ideally getting some wood in there where the grain is perpendicular (or at least diagonal) to the break would help keep it from re-breaking.
I'd be tempted to drill a couple of long holes, and use bamboo chopsticks as dowels. Bamboo is very dense and hard. I have cheap kids chairs repaired this way that have taken tremendous punishment.
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The farmer in me says dowel it with cut down jolt head nails! I've done it before and I can assure you, there is NO movement in the repair! :-)
I was looking at the above photos today and I had a eureka moment. I could sand the glue off within the break, titebond and clamp in position (clamping from above and below seems to pull it into shape), remove the tuners, drill a hole on an angle from within one tuner hole across the break, titebond in dowel, cut/sand any protruding dowel within the tuner hole.
Edit: ....or I could jolt head nail it! Lol.