When I first looked at this violin, I thought the end block was just split in half and I would be able to repair it without taking the top off. Once I started working on it and had the saddle removed, I could tell that it was broken into 4 pieces. I needed to remove the top.
Here are a few photos, the ribs were also a bit warped so I needed to glue in small sections and that one piece of wood was used to push it out a little bit until it dried. Oops, I don't have a photo of the how the bottom bouts looked when it was finished.<https://a.cs-violin-shop.com/p>
IMG 20211028 155123 410
IMG 20220126 121202 390
IMG 20220126 122213 697
IMG 20220212 155952 660
IMG 20220217 141914 268
IMG 20220225 175218 656
This is a violin that was made by my customers father, so there is a lot of sentimental value. Usually I can glue ribs back onto the ribs and sometimes repair a broken block without taking the instrument apart. In this case since the ribs were unglued and the block was broken, I needed to take the top off to repair the block and reglue the ribs.