Tuners for 1898 Lyon & Healy Improved Jupiter Mandolin

[Bob Hensley]

A customer has brought us a nice challenge - an old taterbug Lyon & Healy from 1898. He wants us to get it into playing condition.

The body is in amazingly good shape, the bowl back is tight and everything else seems good - EXCEPT the tuning gears. They are missing one entire post and worm gear, as well as the support blocks for the worm gear. I have the other button that is missing, although it is in two pieces. I have measured the tuners and the spacing looks to be 28/32, which is not a spacing I have found thru my usual sources.

Does anyone in here have in their "junk" boxes a bass side set of tuners that they would part with so I can get this mandolin playing again? Or does anyone know of a source of tuners with this spacing, or a way I can make these useful again? I would like to keep it as original as possible, but the customer has said he is less interested in original and more interested in playable - this was his grandfather's instrument and he wants to give it to his mandolinist son in working condition.

Thanks for any help you can provide - all the great info on this forum has saved me before, and I can only hope it will again this time :)

[Frank Ford]

As you contemplate this job and look for gears, don't forget to consider post length.   Modern instruments typically have much thicker peg heads, so there could be some problems in that department. 

It's likely to be more productive to think in terms of plugging holes, adding a face veneer, and new tuners.  There's no possibility of this mandolin ever having vintage collector value, so no need to worry about that. . .