BLESS THE EEJITS...

...they keeps me in work!

This beautiful cittern was made in Bruges - the owner (eejit) had left it in a badly insulated attic for a couple of years. You get the picture - In high summer it's living in an oven - in winter, a freezer.

A delicate wooden structure such as this doesn't react well to extremes of temperature & humidity. The fingerboard shrinks causing the frets to sprout out of the sides.

Trying to  play this will shred your precious finger tips.

The bigger bummer is that the table starts to yield to the pressure of the strings necessitating a shim under the bridge.  You can see that I've put a 2 mm strip of rosewood under the bridge. I'll need at least another 1 mm to make this instrument playable.

This is most likely a pointless strategy because - the taller the bridge, the more pressure on the table.

We'll see how it goes.

Not hold breath, hey?