Replacing ribbon side braces with timber

[Alan Carruth]

John Hall wrote:
"On the other side, if you hit the area of a support you may not see a crack as the wood may take the stress of shock better than a ribbon."

In the testing I did (which used static loads rather than impact) the tapes and the wood broke together, so long as the glue joint didn't fail. Titebond failed at slightly lower loads than HHG. The nylon tapes I tried tended to be much stronger than the wood, but didn't glue well; the wood broke and left the tape whole and flapping. The load at failure was a bit lower with the nylon tapes than it was with the cotton/poly using either glue

One objection that has been raised to the use of side tapes is that, on old instruments with side cracks, the tapes are also broken. The thing is that you don't know how much force it took to do the damage; anything can be broken if you try hard enough. My tests showed that the tapes about doubled the force it took to break a sample of side wood, and I know from experience that they do stop side cracks from running. Nothing you do will make these things bullet proof, but you can still add a lot of toughness pretty easily.