Repairs

by Ed Drury

 Didjeridu repairs range from common frequent little problems like mouthpiece repair to major restorations. I'm going to discuss some repairs I have made, including a major restoration. At the end of the article, I'm going to recommend some special people, masters really, who I have had direct experience with. This is a short list, there are many skillful people who can help you. But when the situation calls for it and the instrument was a major investment, the people I'm going to recommend are proven. I want to make it plain that some of the repair examples given may not be the best for you. I'm only giving you may hands on experience. There may be better solutions. Instrument repair is both art and science. This article is about my attempts to make my personal collections playable, done at my own risk. If you have an instrument you want to attempt to repair, proceed at your own risk. I hope that my experiences will offer, at the least, some ideas to get you started.

Those small superficial cracks

 For those small cracks I don't worry. If they are leaking air, then I cover them over with a bit of beeswax. If you're not sure if they go through to the interior of your didjeridu, place your mouth over the crack and suck. If air enters you mouth then it's comming fom the inside of the didjeridu. The only caution I have about beewax is not to melt it and drip it into the crack. What happens is that the melted wax runs freely into your didjeridu. As it cools, it expands and actually can make the cracking worses. Instead, just cut a small piece and roll it between the palms of the hand into a thin snake like shape a little larger than the crack. Push the beeswax snake over the crack just to seal it.

 Some instruments I've had developed a lot of small superficial cracks very early. This is worrisome and I borrowed a fix from my friend Rick Dusek in Las Vegas. I put on three coats of Diamond Semi-gloss Varathane. Ok, this is extreme but I can't argue with the results. It stops the problem once and for all while doing very little to the tonal characteristics. While I don't endorse this type of procedure as standard practice, on the didjeridus I've felt the need to do this extreme step to the results were years of worry free playing with no further repairs needed. Just follow the directions careful and take all recommended precautions about ventilation, clean up and drying times.

 The remake : Part One, it arrives.....

It's happened to other people. And while I'd been very lucky  up to this point, didjeridus can and do get damaged in shipment. I had options but all of those meant sending this beautifully crafted and painted yidaki made for me by Frank Thill away from me. Still, the damage was extensive. As you can see, the top third of the instrument was broken almost as if someone took it over their knee and tried to snap it in half. In the yellow orche band there was a chunk of wood missing which I never found.

   Of course, all I wanted to do was play this stick. Frank's attention to a perfect mouthpiece carefully shaped with no need for beeswax is a strong attraction for me. So I did something I'm not going to recommend. It's messy, counter productive but I just had to see how this beautiful mouthpiece felt. I filled in all the gaping cracks with wood puddy. It played for a few seconds until the soft puddy leaked out. Then I had to clean all that puddy out of everywhere. Yuck. Was it worth the trouble? No, it just delayed the real repair job.

 The first step was to try and make the pipe fit back together. This wasn't going to happen. It's like a spiral fracture of the leg. A closed reduction is not going to allow it to heal normally. Surgery is indicated. First step, take the stress off these long cracks so that the wood doesn't continue to split along the grain. This meant drilling tiny holes at both ends of the long cracks. Once that was done, I still couldn't align the wood. Using an exacto knife, I carefully cleaned out the cracks. In places, I had to carve the wood so that it would fit back together as best as possible. In the place where the chunk was missing, there is another potential problem. Nothing to glue to. Here, wood filler would be needed. In this area, I notched the wood creating a V shape along the margins of the hole. This was to allow the plug of wood puddy the greatest surface area to bond with and hopefully keep it from running into the inside of the pipe. As it turned out, some did but that's another repair.

 Now closing up the pipe again is tricky. I didn't take near enough time with the exacto knife to make the pieces fit back together again. You've got to, I learned, make it fit as well as possible or it really tries to spring open. Working from the bottom up, I used two part epoxy glue on both edges of the crack and then I wrapped string around the instrument every inch or so and sinched it as tightly as I could to get the edges of the cracks as close to closure as possible. In places, this was impossible. Once I had glued and wrapped the entire length of the crack, I let the epoxy cure according to the instructions on the package. The test came when I cut the strings with my exacto knife. Luckily, it didn't spring back open. Then I had the drill holes as well as the places which didn't come back together durring the gluing process.

 For this I used a carpenters hard surface wood filling compound I found at a local hardware store. Craft stores usually carry wood fillers, but they are for cosmedic repairs of scratchs and supperficial cracks in wood. No, you need serious wood filler. Alternatively, I've been told several times you can make wood filler from saw dust and Elmer's glue. Sounds messy and more variable I didn't want : my skills at mixing glue. The wood filler I got is also made by Elmers and is ready to go right out of the can. Research the enviromental and health questions if you will. I just wanted my didjeridu to play! I had no plans to lick the wood filler while it set so I felt fairly safe about using it. After filling in the holes and the wider portions of the cracks which couldn't be closed by gluing there is a wait for the wood filler to cure. It really only a few hours, but I had to give it a couple of test blows to see if all my work was in vain. Success! It played well. Now for the cosmetic issues. I sanded the wood puddy and surrounding wood smooth. Matching the yellow ochre was not difficult. Yellow ochre acrylic paint from the crafts shop was perfect, as was the black and white. The red I found was not, however a perfect match. But it was close and I just repainted the entire top third of the instrument. Because of the distance between the two uses of red ochre, it's very hard to tell that the top is re-painted and the bottom is original paint.

And here it is! The damage is pretty much invisible. Up close you can see, but you really have to look closely. On the right, it joins my collection as my personal favorite. I feel it's a bit fragile, so I'm careful when I handle it, but I love playing it. I recorded a little bit of it on a track called "Missing" on mp3.com.

 There is more to do yet. Although I took precautions against it, quite a bit of wood filler made it's way into the interior of the pipe. This little intrusion of material is enough to alter the pitch of the instruement just a bit so that it's not a dead on E as it was and so should be removed. I tried attaching sand paper to a wooden dowell and sanding it out from the inside, but the material is too hard and some extension to a power operated brush will be required to surgically remove the filler without disturbing the termite tracks. But it plays and sounds so well, I'll save that for another time and perhaps some more pictures of this procedure will be in a future issue.

 The repair and restoration people I trust the most are John Madill, Allan Shockley and Frank Thill. The restoration of my Beswick didjeridu by John Madill is simply amazing. Recently, I saw a custom pipe of Allan Shockley's which sold for $2,000. Anyone who can do work which fetchs that type of money is certainly a master craftsman. Frank Thill's credentials as a master yidaki maker are well know, but what is lesser known is that he has done restorations of instruments for major galleries in Australia. It is their advice that I seek whenever I have a question about repairs. You can contact all three via the web links at http://www.rdrop.com/~mulara/links/players.html.

Questions about this and other articles should be sent to Ed Drury