Mike's Oud Forums

Honing tuning peg holes to fit new tuning pegs

benjaoud - 8-21-2024 at 12:35 AM

I have a question about replacing the tuning pegs. I have bought an Arabic floating bridge oud which most likely have been stored with strings under tension for extended periods of time - the tuning pegs (or/and the holes?) have become oval and it is not even remotely possible to tune it or keep the oud in tune.

A while back I talked to an oud luthier who told me that he never replaces solely the pegs on any oud - when he replaces the pegs, he always also hones the holes to be sure to have a perfect fit with the new pegs.

He said it's not a very difficult or time-consuming task. Now I would like to do the same with this oud. It is not a very high quality oud (but it's good enough to be worth fixing) so I don't want to go through the trouble and costs of sending it to a luthier..

Could someone please give me some advice on this, and tell me how to find the tool to hone the tuning peg holes?

coolsciguy - 8-21-2024 at 05:48 AM

Hi,

I have never done this myself and don't know what it entails but you'll need a Peg Shaver & Reamer:

https://a.co/d/gbgC14X

Brian Prunka - 8-21-2024 at 07:18 AM

I've done this. You need a peg shaver and reamer as noted by coolsciguy.

For a one-time repair, by the time you buy the necessary tools, the pegs, spend the time to learn how to do it, and actually do it, it probably won't be much cheaper than just paying a luthier to do it. Depends on what your time is worth.
So it's only really worth it if you want to learn how so you can do it again in the future. I've replaced pegs on a few ouds now and made minor adjustments to several more, so for me it was worth it to learn.
Also practicing on a relatively cheap instrument is a pretty sensible way to learn.

For an oud repair it may be better to get an adjustable shaver - you don't really know what size holes/pegs you are dealing with. That's what I have.
A violin peg shaver is going to be too small. A viola peg shaver is likely okay.

You should measure the existing holes at their widest point so you are sure you are getting big enough pegs. When you ream the holes to reshape them, they will get a little wider, so take that into account.
Some "oud" pegs will probably work but often on an oud that needs refitting the holes will be rather large. Viola pegs are usually slightly larger than "oud" pegs and might be a better choice for this (I've used oud pegs for all my projects, but none had particularly large holes to begin with).

It's not very difficult to do an adequate job but requires some general comfort with woodworking. Obviously a skilled luthier will do a better job in less time, but you should be able to make the oud usable. While it's not terribly time-consuming for an experienced person, it will be for you since you haven't done it before. Also your peg shaver will likely not be of the same quality blade that a pro would use so it might go a bit slower.

I'd recommend practicing shaving on the old pegs, and maybe have a few spares of the new pegs in case you mess up.

Be careful when reaming the holes: go slow and keep testing the fit. It is really, really, easy to very quickly take out too much wood and make the holes too large. All you want to do is make the holes perfectly round and smooth and make sure the taper is correct (many ouds come with nonstandard tapers, and require more reaming to reshape them to a standard taper).

The wood around the holes will compress a bit over time, making the holes larger. If you plan for this, it actually improves the fit with use. If you don't plan for it, the pegs will go too deeply into the hole (and if you really didn't plan, it might go all the way up to the collar and still not be tight enough).

You'll probably want to have a small saw to trim the ends of the pegs. It's not totally necessary but makes them look neater to not stick out the opposite side. A rule of thumb is to trim the pegs a bit shorter than you think - over time the peg will fit slightly deeper in the hole and you want it to end up flush with the pegbox.

Look up tutorials on installing violin/viola pegs. There are a bunch, watch/read several before you start and see if you feel like you can do it.

Brian Prunka - 8-21-2024 at 07:22 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  

You should measure the existing holes at their widest point so you are sure you are getting big enough pegs. When you ream the holes to reshape them, they will get a little wider, so take that into account.


To clarify this, pegs will tell you what the width is at the collar (a viola peg is typically ~9mm I think). In case it's not obvious: you don't want the collar all the way up to the hole, so the hole should be a fair bit smaller than the "collar" width. You will also be shaving the peg somewhat so it will be smaller.

benjaoud - 8-22-2024 at 02:13 PM

Wow, very informative replies, thank you!

So I will get the necessary tools and learn how to do it myself. I did some searches and found that there are reamers and shavers with different tapers. Most of the ones i found were 1:26 or 1:30. It seems 1:30 taper is what we should work with on ouds.

About the reamer, I couldn't find one specifically for violas, most reamers state that they are for both violins and violas.

About the shaver, it seems a bit more tricky to choose. There are cheap ones for viola pegs, 15-20 euros, which I guess is what I would go for. An adjustable shaver, however, seems to cost 100+ euros, which is not exactly what I had in mind to pay.. Unless I'm missing something here, or if someone have a product to recommend..

So, lets see if I got it straight. What I need are:
.. Reamer for violin/viola
.. Viola peg shaver (or adjustable shaver if I can find one at a decent price)
.. New set of oud pegs

and I'm set to go

benjaoud - 8-22-2024 at 11:59 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  
Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  

You should measure the existing holes at their widest point so you are sure you are getting big enough pegs. When you ream the holes to reshape them, they will get a little wider, so take that into account.


To clarify this, pegs will tell you what the width is at the collar (a viola peg is typically ~9mm I think). In case it's not obvious: you don't want the collar all the way up to the hole, so the hole should be a fair bit smaller than the "collar" width. You will also be shaving the peg somewhat so it will be smaller.




Do you happen to know what the size of the hole at its widest point should be in order to fit common sized oud pegs (which seem to be 7mm diameter at the tip and 9mm at the collar)?

Brian Prunka - 8-23-2024 at 08:18 AM

Yes, a 1:30 reamer is what you want. Because of the shape, the same one will work for violin/viola/oud.

Around 8mm is what I've used before for the holes, or a little smaller. I mainly try to remove as little wood as possible and keep the holes smaller if I can. Note that each peg and hole will end up being slightly different - you have to fit each peg individually.

The adustable shavers are more expensive, yes. You should be able to work with a standard viola peg shaver but for a beginner it may be a little trickier. If you go slow and are careful you should be okay.

I'd also suggest getting a stick of peg compound like Hill makes, a tiny bit on the pegs will help them turn smoothly.

slev - 10-3-2024 at 05:37 AM

I did a peg swap on a seven string baglama.
Send the pegs by hand starting with a larger grit around 300 after several grit swaps I finally finished at 1300 grit took a long time, but would rather replace a pack and figure out how to fix or replace the tuning box. I had no idea there were special tools to do this, but I did it by hand without tools.