The first thing to say is that small cracks are usually harmless - The trouble is that the best way to repair them and stop them spreading involves taking the soundboard off, which is best left to a maker.
If the crack is unlikely to spread ( - and if there's a curved J-bar under the soundboard it shouldn't go beyond that - ) a cosmetic repair would be a straightforward job for any maker - gluing in a thin, matching spline to fill it, for example. It's hard to be sure the action is rising if you don't have any earlier measurements of it. I'd suggest measuring the height of the first string above the fingerboard (not above a fret) at the position of the 8th fret. If this is no more than 4mm the action should be OK - but you should still note your measurement and the date for comparison with later measurements. Any higher than 4mm starts to make playing tough and a maker should be consulted. There are straighforward ways of fixing a slightly high action - differently graded frets for example, along with a lower nut, which isn't a big job - but in extreme cases the lute will need more major work to adjust it. I've found that the most common cause of cracking is extreme changes in humidity. If the humidity is stable, the wood shouldn't shrink and crack. As you probably know, Thomas Mace's answer to this was to keep his lute in a bed. Good luck with this. Bill From: Adam Olsen <arol...@gmail.com> To: Lute List <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Monday, 14 May 2012, 4:46 Subject: [LUTE] Lute cracking I have a 13 course lute that was built in New Zealand, and is now in SLC, Utah. There's definitely a crack forming just to the right of the heart decoration at the bottom of the soundboard (toward the treble side). I've got the dampit in there which I wet every other day (this is what the maker recommended, there is a hole where the strap peg usually goes, and a dampit fits), and then two oasis case humidifers in the case. I have a hydrometer that reads around 50 all the time, or sometimes just below. The action seems to be getting a bit higher. Is it possible it's cracking from too much humidity? Is there something I can do to stop it? I'm worried about it getting worse. I just got this lute in February after waiting since 2007 to get one. I'm really kind of bummed out about this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. To get on or off this list see list information at [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
