Herbert, Taco has given you a good answer, but let me add to it (I make my own pegs). The peg is hardwood, and so is the pegbox. There is wear on both. If each were perfect, like the legendary One Horse Shay that had every part so perfectly matched that it never wore out until the whole thing fell into dust one day (an old New England poem) then the wear could be taken up by just pushing the peg in deeper.
But unfortunately nothing is perfect, no matter how lubricated. Anomalies in the grains of each will eventually result in differential wear, usually a bit of "out of round" either of the peg or the peg box. Taco is also right that the violin pegs and lute pegs have a different taper (off the top of my head I think the lute is 30 to 1 and the violin 25 to 1, but don't call me on that). A reamer for the tapered holes costs about $80 so is not practical for the occassional fix. But if you can borrow one you can make a peg shaper for about 5 bucks. Picture your old hand pencil sharpener in the school pencil box. Buy a "jointer blade" (I had to spend $10 as I could only fine a 2 pack, but as each blade has two edges I figure I have about five hundred years worth of blade surface of I reshape 10 pegs a day). Drill a hole through the long side of a block of scrap wood the length of a peg (the hole near one long edge). Take the borrowed reamer and ream the hole in the block to the taper of the peg. Shave the surface of the block to make a place for the jointer blade (picture the old fashioned pencil sharpener) and screw the blade into place. Now you have peg shaper (but do test it on a cheap peg first to see that you have the angle of the blade right). As to the peg box, it can't hurt to gently use that borrowed reamer very gently to smooth the holes. But the enventual result would be to make the hole too wide. But you can always trim the shoulder of a peg a bit, and subject it to the "pencil sharpener" to gain more length. Coming back to basics, if the peg wear and the hole wear are perfectly even then you won't notice it. But that is unlikely, more likely the wear will be uneven causing grabbing and/or slipping. Best, Jon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herbert Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 12:10 PM Subject: [LUTE] Do pegs wear out? > > A bit mundane, "lo siento mucho". Do pegs wear out? > > If so, how long does it take, and what are the symptoms, > and what do you have to do to fix it? > > I tried a Google search on this subject, figuring the > violin community might provide an abundance > of information, but such was not the case. > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > >
