What to do with stuck violin pegs

A stuck violin peg can be an annoying pain to deal with. Nobody wants to be caught in this situation! The truth is that some people may be tempted to throw away the violin or take it to a professional to look at it. While that may be the best option, there are a number of things you can try with the peg to move and readjust it yourself. While I do not guarantee that any of these will work 100 percent of the time, they are safe and will not damage the instrument as long as you are careful.

The first thing to do is remove the rope, if you can. If you are desperate and neither the string nor the peg is moving, remove the string and all other strings by unscrewing or cutting them with a wire cutter. This will relieve some of the stress on the peg and give you a lot more room to work as you figure out how to remove the peg. The mess of all the strings can create quite a bit of stress in regards to fixing the stuck peg as it gives you another piece of the puzzle to solve. Don’t let this happen to you.

Next, try taking a screwdriver or blunt nail of some kind and pressing it against the inside of the dowel. You want to make sure you don’t scratch the peg or anything else around it while doing this. That may mean getting something with a rounded tip. Bring a soft mallet to the opposite end and try to tap it against the opposite side of the screwdriver so that it presses against the peg and pulls it out of the violin roll. Be gentle! It should only take a few light blows with a rubber mallet or hammer and the plug should slide and be movable immediately.

The last thing you can try is to take lube and spray it along the inside of the dowel to make it slide more easily. From here you can tap it from the inside or you can take a cloth and wrap it around the peg and twist it. This will make the stuck peg slide much easier and will help to remove it quickly and without incident. Just make sure you don’t spray too much lubricant or else you may not be able to grab the peg of the violin.