A few months ago I discovered that the harpsichord case had developed a split in the bottom. Although it sounds more awful than it really is, it was somewhat alarming at the time. I knew I would have to fix this somehow. Here is what I was faced with.

Split in Bottom of Case

The small, thin strip of wood (poplar in this case) shown resting on the braces is the material I used to patch it. I thinned the wood with planes into a wedge shape in order to ensure a tight fit into the split, then cut it to length. This technique works very well indeed.

In the following two pictures you can see the patch protruding above the surface in the leftmost two. Then all I had to do was use a sharp chisel to pare down the excess level with the surface and then sand everything smooth. You’d never know it was there (I hope!) in the picture on the right.