Hi Bill, I know of at least one very well known and respectable luthier who does indeed glue the blocks on and doesn't see the sense in them not being glued.
My hire lute was recently under repair for two loose bars, while it was under repair, the luthier, whom the Lute Society trusted with the repair, as well as re-gluing the bars, he glued the blocks too and blamed the unglued blocks as the likely cause of the failing of the bars. When I got the lute back, I would swear it sounded better than it did before the failure of the bars. Although a little adjustment was done to the action while it was under repair, but I don't know how much that would affect the sound. My point being, gluing the blocks didn't have an adverse effect of the sound. I'm convinced it's the best way to go and I'm going to take a page out of his book and glue mine when I get to that stage. James. On 6 February 2013 13:01, William Samson <[1]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Dear Collective Wisdom. I have never understood why luthiers have never got around to gluing little blocks to the inside of the edge ribs in way of the ends of the bars. Throughout history one of the commonest faults in a lute has been the ungluing of a bar end causing the soundboard to sag and creating buzzes. Thomas Mace has a lot to say about this along with full instructions to the owner on how to fix the problem themselves if they don't live near a luthier. It seems to me that a simple preventative measure would be to glue little blocks or props inside the edge ribs for the ends of the bars to rest on. I've noticed that some early guitars have such props, so why not lutes? Would the addition of blocks/props kill the sound of the instrument? I very much doubt it. Any ideas why such an obvious remedy to a common problem was ignored by the old ones? Built-in obsolescence maybe ;) ? I look forward to reading your hypotheses. Kind regards, Bill Samson -- To get on or off this list see list information at [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:willsam...@yahoo.co.uk 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html