fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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Help? (revised) How best to handle pegs?
I have an oud that came with rough olive (?) wood pegs painted black. The pegbox looks like that ubiquitous Zan wood, whatever that is, that only
shows up in Mid-Eastern cabinetry. I know I could lightly sand and re-finish these pegs, nothing wrong with them, but I prefer pretty rosewood (not
overly hard & abrasive ebony). I got nice rosewood viola pegs at $12 a dozen from dov-music.com (they have ALL sorts), and find that:
1) the taper on the viola pegs is 1:25, on both my ouds it's more like 1:16, and
2) the viola peg starts at 8mm, whereas the oud starts more like 7.6mm.
Other than just working with the original pegs -- which is what I will do on my other oud that has unfinished olivewood pegs, (actually rough wood
works great and needs no soap/chalk!) -- I see two main options: ream the holes, or reshape the viola pegs.
I don't have a shop full of nice tools, and don't need to spend more money and time on one-use gizmos. A luthier would probably promptly ream those
holes for me (something else comes to mind), but I'm just not that keen on changing a traditional design that maybe has a very good reason for being.
It's easy to remove wood, much harder to restore. So I'd rather shave the pegs to fit the oud. Plus pegs are cheap.
To shave the pegs, what I came up with to make some disposable "shavers" is to wrap and firmly tape some emery cloth or stiff sandpaper (abrading side
facing in) on an existing oud peg to impart the correct taper, remove the peg and then use this hollow cone as a sort of "pencil sharpener" to sand
down the viola pegs to the oud peg's taper (and starting diameter), then finish with steel wool. This should give me pretty pegs that will accurately
fit the existing holes. Anyone see a serious problem here?
Any other ideas or thoughts? I would appreciate any advice. Thanks!
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jdowning
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A good peg fit is important so if you have standard taper viola pegs of good quality either purchase a violin peg reamer from a luthier supply shop or
get the job done for you by a local luthier to fit the new pegs.
If you decide to purchase a reamer, you can then use this to make a peg shaper to accurately re-cut the original pegs - if that is what you want to
do. Those rosewood pegs are really inexpensive but are likely better than the originals to judge from your description.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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Thanks, Jdowning, from your reply I see my initial description was likely unclear, so I clarified it, I think.
Dov-music.com has a huge selection of viola pegs, in all sorts of woods and beautiful designs, but their basic unadorned pegs are very nice. They also
have reamers and shavers, but I'm trying not to modify the oud.
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Dr. Oud
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I have often shaped pegs by hand using a medium crosscut file and sandpaper. File off the shiny spots on the peg where the peg does fit the pegbox
wall while turning the peg to avoid flat spots. Sand it smooth with 100, then 220 grit and try it again and again in the peg box until you see a shiny
ring around both sides of the peg. Fine steel wool the final fit to buff the shank, then apply some peg dope where it fits into the pegbox. Drill the
string hole in the shank perpendicular to the grip (across the grain), and countersink each end with a larger drill bit turned by hand.
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jdowning
Oud Junkie
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Richard's suggestion is likely the most straightforward solution to your question - taking the time to achieve an accurate fit.
Giving the problem a bit more thought - and building upon your 'cone of sandpaper' idea - another solution would be to form a close fitting sheet
metal cone around the peg shank and use this as the basis for making a peg shaper without need for a peg reamer.
To clarify what I am proposing, I attach a few images.
The first image shows one of my peg shapers made from a block of wood. Essentially a giant pencil sharpener, it is easily made by drilling a hole
through the block (the diameter of the small end of the reamer), reaming out the hole with the peg reamer and planing down the top of the block until
the plane just 'breaks through' the top of the reamed hole. This surface is made flat and straight and the cutter (in this case a plane iron) is
bolted firmly in place with the cutting edge just projecting into the reamed hole. To work efficiently the cutter must be honed razor sharp.
The second image shows a pattern made by wrapping a piece of paper around the peg (in this example a violin peg) and cutting along the creased
lines.
The metal used for the peg 'tube' is made from an old biscuit tin - the tinplate is thin, soft and easily formed. Do not try to use the metal from
soft drink cans as it is too 'springy' and difficult to form.
The final image shows the metal formed tightly around the peg shank. The old tinsmith trick of forming tinplate into a tube around around a mandrel is
first to hammer lightly along the joint edges to make them conform to the shank profile and then use a 'wringing' action, twisting the metal first in
one direction and then the other to obtain a perfect fit.
Having formed the tube, a channel is cut in a block of wood to receive the tube and the top of the block planed flat and straight. The tube is
positioned (with modelling clay) so that the tube joint just projects above the planed surface and the tube is cemented in place by pouring epoxy
cement around it. The cement surrounds and supports the entire outside surface of the tube.
After the cement has cured, the projecting part of the tube is filed flush with the planed surface of the block and the cutter fitted in the usual
manner.
I have not made a peg shaper this way before but it should work.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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Very good -- see, team oud brains can do anything, at low cost!
Dov Schmidt at dov-music.com will custom shape pegs if you send him a model peg. He says about $10-$12 for a set of 4 custom rosewood pegs, about 6-8
weeks. Not for us impatient types.
Because it's so cheap and quick, I'm going to try the simple inside-facing sandpaper cone first.
If there's a problem with too much flex, I will try your excellent metal cone idea, and in the absence of blades, line it internally with sandpaper.
I thought of embedding a cone in hot-melt glue (which makes an instant thermoplastic, great for all sorts of quick prototypes, even electronic
connectors) and setting it in a slow-turning drill platform, like a 1" hole saw. Electric peg shaver.
Now that we have the tricky taper acquisition problem licked, we can also make a $1 reamer at any taper in a few minutes by lining the
outside of the metal cone with an abrasive cloth or paper. A little superglue, for us impatient types, can hold it in place. Obviously the
reamer is too thick where we started, but the cone can be used at any diameter, all the way to its point. Still, I would like to retain the oud's
original holes/taper, as I worship it.  Man, is it good!
BTW, that pegbox looks like walnut, not Zan, after all.
En avant!
p.s. I love Dov's many decorated viola pegs, rosewood, tigerwood, tetul, etc, from $20 to $30 for a dozen, but I'm over budget at the moment and clean
& simple & cheap is beautiful.
Plain: [file]10682[/file]
Decorated: [file]10680[/file] [file]10684[/file] [file]10686[/file]
Over the top, Pernambuco, $210 a dozen: [file]10688[/file]
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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Whoa! I remember reading something about rosewood, but this is really something. I made a few of the hollow sandpaper cones to shape the viola pegs to
the original pegs' taper. As I turned it in the sandpaper, after about ten minutes, peg number one had produced an amazing pile of toxic red martian
dust, had clogged three cones with red stuff, but was almost completely unaltered. Where does all that powder come from? It's not just a hard wood,
it's totally resistant to sanding. You could sand those pegs for days, start a fire or two, and never change their dimensions by more than a few
microns. Word to the wise. I guess the original blackened olivewood pegs look pretty good for now, I'll have to just smooth them with ... sandpaper
 Some day I may acquire a blade to make a peg shaver, but for all I know,
rosewood doesn't shave either.
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jdowning
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... Besides, the sandpaper cones - being flexible - are unlikely to produce sufficiently accurate results for the shank taper.
A peg shaver is really the only way to go and custom made shavers are straightforward and inexpensive to make. Suitable blades are not expensive
either (Lee Valley Tools of Ottawa stock a wide variety of plane blades that would be suitable - for example the Tenon Cutter blade 05.J61.20 at $5.50
Can).
Shaving rosewood pegs is not a problem - I have cut pegs made from Brazilian and Indian rosewoods. Some true Rosewoods, being somewhat 'oily', will
quickly clog sandpaper but finish beautifully when turned on a lathe or cut with a peg shaver.
I shall try to complete the 'metal cone peg shaver' over the next few days (with posted images) to satisfy myself of the feasibility (or otherwise) of
the design. No guarantees at this stage though!
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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Actually, if the rosewood weren't so bloody impregnable, the little sandpaper cones hold shape pretty well. Of course it's better if you have
something stiffer.
Curious how it will work out.
Did you measure the taper on several oud pegs? Is it always something like 16:1? On both my ouds it is, quite consistent; both are Syrian, one from
Damascus, the other from Aleppo. I wonder how they taper them in Egypt and in Turkey. It may not seem like a big difference, but of course it acts
differently from a Viola Peg, it has that obvious "push it in to tighten" effect, where at 25:1 or 30:1 it's more like "set it and forget it".
Whatever reason they had for making them that way, they probably had one, so I didn't want to change it.
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jdowning
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I have no data on oud pegs but I do on historical lute pegs which may be of interest as there is no difference in function between an oud peg or a
lute peg - what is best for one is also best for the other.
I have gathered this data from museum drawings, museum photographs of peg boxes and my own measurements of instruments. The lutes are from the 16th to
17th C ranging in size from tenor lute to great octave bass lute to Chittarone. I have also included data from three 18th C mandolinos (ie tiny
descant lutes NOT mandolins) for comparison. Peg materials range from dyed hardwood to ivory to mother of pearl (MOP).
Peg taper is defined as the measured shank divided by the difference between the maximum and minimum shank diameters.
The data is listed as Maker, date, maximum shank diameter (just below the peg head), peg material and shank taper.
LUTES
M. Harton, 1602, 8 mm, hardwood - 1:20
G. Gerle, 1580, 6 mm, hardwood - 1:26
G. Hieber, 16th C, 5.5 mm, hardwood - 1:31
M. Harton, 1599, 8 mm, hardwood - 1:23
M. Tieffenbrucker, 1608, 8 mm, hardwood - 1:16
W. Tieffenbrucker, 1592, ?, hardwood - 1:17
C. Choc, 1630, 7 mm, ivory - 1:20
Anon. late 17 C (?), 8 mm, ivory - 1:18
MANDOLINOS
M. Bergonzi, 1755, 7mm. MOP - 1:12
FB Milanese, 1767, 6 mm, hardwood - 1:14
D.E. 17th C (?), 7 mm, ivory. - 1:14
So the variation is great but an oud peg with a 1:16 taper would be in line with early lute practice. A 'slow taper' (1:30) peg would be less prone to
the peg popping out with humidity change but a 'fast taper' peg would be best for narrow pegboxes (eg on mandolinos) providing a large bearing surface
in the pegbox at the peg head side with a relatively small shank diameter at the other side. Slow taper pegs will wear and push though the pegbox
faster.
Lute pegs were made with as small diameter shanks as practical to make tuning less critical when using gut strings (old ouds likely followed a similar
practice for the same reason)
Modern nylon strings have much more 'stretch' than gut so peg diameter is less critical allowing the use of violin pegs with 1:30 taper by oud makers
today.
I use a 1:30 taper for lute pegs which is satisfactory. A custom made reamer would not be that expensive to make if a faster taper was deemed
necessary.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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This is very interesting comparative data. I tried to measure taper around the "area of interest" between the sides of the pegbox, as opposed to the
whole peg, assuming the taper may not be consistent over the whole length of the peg. A lot of oud pegs are very handmade-looking, and they are not
really interchangeable.
Another interesting detail is how on my Sukar the pegs increase in length towards the nut, they start out around 37mm shank length and closest to the
nut they exceed 50mm. Since the pegbox widens towards the nut, it might seem to be largely an aesthetic decision, it does look nice, but it also gives
a more consistent exposed length to the touch. It's a nice detail, I wonder how many makers do that. My Halabi oud uses the same peg length
throughout.
Maybe your table should include the peg length, preferably as a range from shortest to longest shank lengths (excluding the head), along with both min
and max diameters on the pegs? The min diameter is especially critical for initial fit, nomatter what the taper.
The 2 sets of oud pegs I have measured would then look like:
Bashar Halabi, 2007, 10.5 - 7.3 mm, 55 mm, Natural Olive wood - 16:1
Ibrahim Sukar, 2009, 10 - 7.6 mm, 37 - 50 mm, Dyed Olive wood - 16:1
It seems there's a definite method to the madness. Sukar in particular has an engineer's mind. He doesn't focus on looks, rather on practicality, and
timbre. Every detail on his ouds is functional, and apparently much the same on all his models, from the plainest Model 1 to the most finely finished
series. If he used a 16:1 taper I didn't want to just blindly ream the pegbox to fit 25:1 viola pegs, given how technically astute Sukar is.
The lute pegs you list also average around 1:16. The obvious advantage to a faster taper is that it won't jam as easily, and you can easily work the
peg in and out to compensate for changes in environment. Maybe there are other reasons. A 30:1 seems a bit extreme, but with modern tools &
tolerances I guess it works OK.
I w'oud imagine the oud pegs are as thick as they are to allow use of less perfect materials without risking fracture.
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jdowning
Oud Junkie
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Lute peg boxes are tapered and the pegs fitted so that the length of each peg projecting from the side of the peg box is uniform - that is the overall
length of a peg at the nut end is longer than one at the tail end of the pegbox.
Note that most of the peg measurements previously posted are derived from instrument drawings and detailed photographs of the peg boxes. The drawings
usually show a single, typical peg - sometimes fully dimensioned sometimes not. Clearly much depends upon the accuracy of the original drawing and how
diligent I have been in measuring each drawing or photograph - so there is some scope for cumulative error in the data.
One correction I must make is that the taper of the G. Hieber lute peg which is 1:26 not 1:31 as previously posted.
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jdowning
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For information, Herdim - the German luthier tool maker - makes high quality (and fairly expensive) peg reamers and shavers. The violin reamers are
made with the now standard taper of 1:30, 10 mm - 5.5 mm diameter as well as the old standard 1:20, 10 mm - 3.5 mm diameter. They also make a lute peg
reamer with 1:25 taper, 12 mm - 4 mm (with cutting edge 20 cm in length).
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jdowning
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For information, the 'metal tube' peg shaver prototype, previously mentioned in this thread, has been completed and tested and works just fine.
I shall go into more detail about how to make it under a new topic that I have planned.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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That looks great. Happy the idea was developed to its logical conclusion. Is the metal sleeve swappable for cutting different tapers?
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jdowning
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The tin tube is very flexible so must be securely cemented in place in the body of the tool in order for it to work. As the tool can be quickly made
it would not be a significant task to make a number of them each with a different taper. However, don't forget that the whole purpose of this tool is
to replicate a particular peg taper so that new pegs may be fitted into existing peg holes without need to recut the holes to a new taper using a peg
reamer.
There are peg shavers on the market - some 'reasonably' priced - that are (infinitely?) adjustable for taper. I have never used one so am not sure how
well they perform. They seem to function like a standard fixed taper peg shaver but with the peg riding in a 'V' groove that can be tilted as
necessary to produce the taper required - the peg being forced against a fixed cutter blade. I imagine that quite a bit of trial and error would be
necessary to obtain the required setting.
Here is an example of an adjustable peg shaper.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
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I'm finally the proud (or resigned) owner of an adjustable peg shaver as shown above. The best price seems to be on e-bay: $45. A 30:1 straight reamer
is $34. Oud pegs and pegboxes are often softer than Ebony or Rosewood. The tools can be applied also to correct hole or peg in soft wood by turning in
the opposite direction to burnish rather than cut. A 30:1 taper seems to be very usable. Where pegs DO need replacing, Dov Schmidt usually has the
same wood/design in Viola (8-10mm) and Violin (7-9mm), so a difficult situation can be handled with a mix of the two sizes. $10-30 procures a dozen
beautiful pegs, e.g. here violin tetul with trim & pin $25 / dozen.
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