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	Although primarily dealing with guitar repairs there is always room for something a little more exotic. This student level sitar was brought in by a customer who had had the gourd damaged in transit from India.The interesting thing about Sitars is that the gourd (body) of the instrument is made from a hollowed out pumpkin. This has been grown inside a clay jar to obtain the correct shape, the jar is then broken and the gourd is fashioned from the pumpkin.

	This one had a hole punched in it and a large crack running from the tailpiece right round to the leaf decor on the opposite side. To repair this I located all the small pieces of pumpkin some from inside the gourd and some in the instrument case and glued them together like piecing a jigsaw together. The finished piece I then glued into the hole after gluing the crack. To do these repairs properly cracks in the gourd have to be set under a fair amount of tension so that the tone of the instrument is not affected.

After the glue had dried I sanded the surface smooth and then dab stained the end of the gourd, darker at the tailpiece graduating to lighter to make the repair look as natural as possible. After that a couple of coats of water based varnish to seal it.		Final repairs were done to a crack in the neck and damaged bone inlay before tuning, play testing (as best as I know how on sitar but it was fun trying) and returning the instrument to the customer.

	I came across this this very messed up Hawkes and Son 'Albert system'clarinet at Bermondsey market one very wet Friday morning several years ago. It made an Ideal restoration project for me while I was at Guildhall Uni learning 'the craft'. It was very wet and most of the keys were totally rusted and had to be cut off the instrument. Came up very nice in the end though and I've yet to come across anything as bad as this at the workshop!

	A near surgical operation was required to re align this very awkward neck split on this Ibanez electro acoustic. It all came right in the end though and a very relieved and happy customer left the workshop that day!

	One of the most vulnerable areas on a bassoon is that of the tenon joints. Often very awkward to assemble and disassemble, extensive use can take its toll. I always recommend keeping the joints well lubricated with a good quality cork grease. This one turned out fine. Its always best to get it into the workshop when the first signs of cracking appear.

	Thankfully, this crack in the top joint was found before it had got to the stage of needing to be pinned. I came across it as I was overhauling the instrument, the crack was more or less invisible until I had stripped down the mechanism. An injection of 'Hot Stuff' and a little touching up was all that was needed in this case to prevent the crack from opening further.

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