hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2894.txt

Episode: 2894
Title: HPR2894: Repairing a Musical Instrument Case
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2894/hpr2894.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:53:09

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This is HPR Episode 2008-194 entitled,
Repairing a Musical Instrument Case.
It is hosted by John Colbe and is about 22 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summer is, I talked about repairing the case for a Vietnamese untran.
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Hey everybody, this is John Colbe in Lafayette, Louisiana.
And I am recording now because it occurred to me a few minutes ago that I should be recording
after Ken's recent call for more shows.
I don't fall into the category of not having the year 2019 by my name,
but I'm working on something right now that I thought might be of interest
and it seems to shame to waste it by not talking about it.
What I'm doing is trying to repair a musical instrument case.
I've got a picture of its current hang on.
I think I'm getting glue on my phone.
I'm nearly done with the project now, but I can kind of talk about
how it came to be and what's going on with it and stuff.
Okay, here's a picture of the case on my little impromptu workplace.
And here's a picture of what I'm doing right now.
So this came to be because somebody called me, I'm the director of the School of Music
and Performing Arts at this university where I teach.
And I get calls from people in the community about things all the time,
and sometimes they want to donate stuff to us.
Sometimes we have no interest in it, and sometimes we do have interest.
And this guy brought in an Asian stringed instrument.
He didn't know exactly what it was called, but I think it belonged to either his dad
or a friend of his or something.
But anyway, after some searching around and help from my ethnomusicology colleague,
Dr. Mark DeWitt, we determined that it was a Vietnamese Don Tron,
which is kind of like a zither or a cotto, and maybe I'll include as part of this
a little recording of the instrument.
Right now, the case is at my house and the instrument is three blocks down the street
at the university.
I figured it would be better to work on the case at home.
But the instrument was in kind of, it wasn't in bad shape,
but it wasn't ready to be played.
And I let it sit in my office for six months, eight months before I finally decided,
you know, either I've got to see if this instrument is worth anything or get rid of it.
And so I sat down with it and spent about an hour with it one day,
figuring out how all the little string supports were supposed to go and putting them in place
and reattaching strings that had come loose and trying to figure out how I should tune it
and then I got everything in place and tuned it up.
And I'll be darn, if it didn't sound pretty amazing.
It's a nice instrument.
It just needed a little bit of work to get it back in playing condition.
And so the next thing to attack was the case, which had fallen apart,
like all the hinges had broken off.
And that was the main thing.
The hinges had broken off.
The front, the clasps on the other side still worked okay, although I wouldn't mind replacing those.
But I went down to the local music store and bought some new hinges.
Three bucks a piece I think they charged me and I ordered some rivets on the internet.
These are attached by a special kind of rivet called a split rivet.
It's a kind of rivet that is not set by using a rivet gun.
But rather it looks, I'll have a picture of a split rivet in my show notes, I guess.
But it's a rivet that goes through and on the other side there are two tines that have to be split apart.
Kind of like when you were a kid, at least in America, when I was a kid,
one of the supplies that we had to attach one piece of paper to another was called a wire brad.
It's this little gold looking thing that you poke through and then you bend the other ends flat
and whatever you've attached to it can still spin around and stuff.
Anyway, they're kind of like wire brads except for meant to hold stuff too.
You can use them in leather work and whatnot.
So anyway, I got some of these things.
I didn't have a split rivet setting tool and so I kind of had to improvise.
I didn't want to pay the 20 bucks for the tool unless it just didn't work trying to use some other methods.
So I actually made it work by using a Phillips head screwdriver held just so you just need to hold it in place
just for a second so you can pop it with the hammer.
And that starts the tines splitting apart and then you can use something else to flatten them all the way.
And it's funny, like many things with repetition you get better.
And so the very first one I did doesn't look good at all.
It's still tiny bit loose.
But by the end after I'd done 12 of these things it was actually pretty solid.
In any event the hinges are securely in place and the lid and the bottom now will stay together.
And so what I'm doing to finish up the project is reattaching the lining of the case
because I had to pull that back and undo it to get to the hinge fastenings.
Because you fasten the hinges underneath all the cloth and what is this black stuff that goes over the top of a case.
I don't know.
Anyway, I thought this might be interesting to some of y'all because I know a lot of people in the hacker community play instruments
and you might need to repair an instrument case at some point.
And so what I'm doing now is the last bit reattaching the lining and this black cloth.
And I'm using contact cement which is, I gotta say it's kind of a revelation to me.
I don't think I'd ever really use this stuff before.
But it's this crazy stuff where you put some cement on each of the surfaces that you're attaching.
And then you basically let it dry before you put it together.
And incredibly it sticks.
It's really pretty darn cool.
And so now what I'm doing is I've been letting these two surfaces dry in air quotes to let the cement set.
And now I'm attaching them.
They say to make sure you get it right the first time because this stuff sticks when it sticks.
And man, they're right.
I'm pretty impressed with this stuff.
When I went to the hardware store to get some, the options were this little bitty bottle, three fluid ounces,
or a can that has like a gallon in it.
And the price was not all that different.
But I still decide you know what I'm just gonna get the little bottle.
I'm gonna take a picture of the contact cement.
This one is by a company called Weldwood contact cement.
So I've already reattached all the lining for the bottom of the case.
And now I'm doing the lid.
And it's going okay.
I think this side is done.
Yeah, man, that's impressive.
I just love this stuff.
I'm gonna have to start using contact cement all the time just to attach all kinds of things.
It really is impressive because I'm using it on completely different kinds of surfaces.
Like there's wood on one side and cloth on the other.
And you spread this stuff all over it.
Let it sit for about 15 minutes and then you put them together and they just stick.
It is really pretty cool.
Now there's a little bit more left to do on this end.
So I will start.
You gotta be careful.
It's getting on my thumb and I can't get it off.
I also have a lot of stuff inside the case to protect it from drips.
Because this stuff, you pull the applicator out of the thing.
I mean, it drips everywhere.
I'll take a picture of, I've got it lined with cardboard right now.
Okay, now I'll take a picture of what I just put together.
This is the same place I took a picture of a moment ago where the two surfaces were part.
So now you can see them back together if you're looking along on the flicker photo album.
My cats, who I mentioned in a previous episode are in the front yard.
Well, he just leaped over a flower pot onto his brother.
And they're having a great time.
Oh, they found the tree.
And they're in the front yard now.
They're starting to get a little bit more adventuresome.
They used to just stay in the backyard.
And they're starting to get more adventuresome.
We just hope they don't start running out in the street.
See if I can get a picture of them in the tree here.
Clever kiddies.
So far so good.
All right.
Now, time to put the last little bit down on the lid.
I have to be careful not to get drips on everything.
I wish I had three hands when I'm doing this job.
You guys ever wish that it would really help to have a third hand.
I have a third hand when I'm doing things like soldering.
But I don't have one when I'm doing this that can hold the stuff back while I put applet.
Well, I apply the glue to it.
It sounds like people are out doing their yards on a Sunday morning.
I'm in my driveway because they say to do it in a well-ventilated area.
And so I guess that means outside.
And getting glue on the inside of the black stuff,
the wood behind everything, and now on the red lining fabric.
And then I'll put a little bit on the other side of the black stuff
because the red fabric kind of comes up over it just a little bit.
And it needs a place to stick.
There's another episode I could record.
I should have been recording yesterday.
Yesterday, I got really good at desodering things.
Because I was trying to repair an audio component.
And I needed capacitors.
I took the capacitors out of one component because they matched what I needed and put them into the other.
And it didn't fix the problem.
But it was pretty fun to do.
And I decided to go ahead and desoder everything else that was on the board,
on the circuit board, for the donor component while I was at it.
Just to have a little bit of spare parts in reserve.
And also to get better at desodering.
Because I was kind of terrible at it.
Man, by the end of that, I got a really good at it.
The desoder, a whole integrated circuit,
in a matter of 15 or 20 seconds.
That's like 16 little pins.
So maybe I'll do another episode about that.
This episode is, don't worry, can't.
I'm not going to conflate two topics into one here.
This episode that I'm doing right now is only about musical instrument case repair.
And another thing I'm going to have to do is reattach.
There's a little piece of cloth that goes from the lid to the bottom.
And it's attached by, well, it was attached by little nails.
I reattached it by a staple.
I've got a staple gun.
And that was better because it had kind of ripped.
I think I'm going to replace the entire piece of cloth with like a shoe string or something.
Because this one looks like it could rip again at any time.
It's pretty old.
I think what happened was that some American serviceman brought this back from Vietnam
when he was there for the Vietnam War.
And it's been sitting since then in this case.
And so some of the stuff is deteriorated.
At the bottom of the case, you can see there's damage to the wood.
Where you can even see the red cloth coming through.
If I were really ambitious, I would try to repair that.
But I'm not.
I just want to get this thing where we can carry the instrument around in the case
and store it safely and have it not fall out and get damaged.
What we're going to do with it is Dr. DeWitt says that this would be a great thing
to bring to class in his world music class when they're talking about Asian music
and the very string instruments.
It's a pretty cool sounding thing.
I wish I had it here in front of me right now so that I could demonstrate it.
But I'll do that before I sign off.
I'll start another recording where I just play a little bit.
I don't really know how to do it.
But I can kind of knock out a tune.
It's tuned in a pentatonic scale.
So no matter what you play, it's going to sound halfway decent.
That's probably all that I really need to say about things right now.
And I will come back later with some audio of the actual instrument.
Okay.
Talk to you soon.
Okay, I'm back.
I am at the office.
And I brought the case back to the office.
I'm very glad to have that project finish because it's been sitting in my garage for a couple of weeks.
And the instrument itself has been sitting in my office for about eight months or so.
And now that the case is repaired,
I can actually take it to the early music instrument room and leave it there.
But before I do that, I'm going to demonstrate for you all.
So again, this thing is called a Don Tain.
I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce it.
It's spelled D-A-N space T-R-A-N-H.
I think it's Don Tain.
And it's played by plucking the strings on one side of the little thingies.
Little thingies.
They're like A-shaped string supports that are arranged in a particular pattern from the highest string to the lowest.
I'm not sure how intunity is right now.
The strings are steel.
It's a very beautiful instrument.
It's got Mother of Pearl inlay.
I will post pictures of this on my Flickr photo album.
And underneath each string is a letter.
SLDR-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L.
You might ask, what in the world do those mean?
Well, those indicate the pitch of the string according to the SoulFedge system.
So-L-D-R-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L-D-R-M-S-L.
So that means G-A-C-D-E.
G-A-C-D-E.
It's a pentatonic scale, meaning a scale that's got five notes instead of the usual seven.
And it's supposed to be played with these metal finger picks, but I can't get them on my finger.
Somebody has pulled them, maybe I can adjust the size a little bit here.
Somebody has pulled them very tight for very small fingers.
Okay, that's a little bit better.
And so you pluck on one side,
and then you can put your hand on the other side,
on the side of the string that's not sounding, and use it for vibrato like so.
That's about the extent of my ability to play this thing.
Anyway, you can tune it using a regular guitar tuner.
It's got pressure pegs like a violin, so it's not the machine tuner's the way a guitar or a mandolin would have.
But it's got these wooden pegs, and the string is wrapped around the peg.
The peg is turned and forced into a hole, until it will stay put.
What string is that?
What you hear is,
when I tune the tuning peg, I have to press down on it so that it shakes.
I should probably put something under that, so it's not banging against the table.
All I've got is a dirty old rag, but I guess that's better than nothing.
Anyway, you don't want to hear me tune the whole thing.
Anyway, that's it. This is the Vietnamese downtown.
It's a 17 string instrument.
It's beautifully made with mother of pearl inlay.
There's mother of pearl inlay on each of the tuning pegs around the top, down the sides,
and each of the little supporting triangle things also has inlay.
It's very, very pretty. I can see why someone bought it and brought it back home.
Now, let's open the case.
Put a bow on this whole project by opening the case, putting the instrument in there, and closing it.
Oh, look at that. It's got hinges that work.
Now, one thing I did not do is there were two kind of retaining things, I guess,
that you put, I'm not sure what they're for anyway, but they came loose.
The one thing I did replace was the strap that holds the lid from going all the way open,
because the reason the hinges were broken in the first place is because somebody forced the lid all the way open,
and it bent back and broke the hinges.
Oh, wait a second. I also repaired the little compartment to store the spare strings and the finger picks.
I'm going to put that stuff in there.
The way it was when the guy brought it to me.
Those are not finger picks. Those are shelf supports.
Oh, man, y'all, I can't tell you how much I love the contact cement.
It's like a revelation to me.
I'm not sure where this thing goes.
There's this funny little, I guess it's a percussion instrument or something.
Honestly, I don't know what it is. I'll take a picture of it.
Maybe somebody out there can identify it.
It's got mother of pearl on it also.
It's a very pretty thing, and it was kind of stuffed inside the sounding hole of the instrument when I took it out of the case.
Okay, here's a picture of the percussion daily.
So I guess what I'll do is I'll stick it back in there.
I don't know where else to put it.
I guess it was part of a set or something.
How would this go in there?
Like so.
Now the instrument is in the case. Let's take a picture of that.
Oh, how exciting.
It's been a long time since this instrument was in the case where I could just close the lid.
In fact, never has been.
Okay.
Okay.
And let's close the lid on this case.
And incidentally on the whole project.
And on this episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This has been John Culp in Lafayette, Louisiana.
And we'll talk to you guys next time about something else.
Until then, please go record yourself an episode about something that interests you.
I personally love anything about repairs.
I know that's the kind of I'm always doing, but I also love hearing about it.
So I'd love to hear if you guys have something that's broken and you fix it in some interesting cool way.
Please record an episode, tell us all about it.
I will talk to you all later. Bye.
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