Veneered Fiddle / Violin Fingerboard

There are lots of old fiddles that have veneered fingerboards.  You can tell them by looking for the line where the top veneer meets the side veneer.  They also simply don't look like ebony or rosewood!  Apparently, at some point in time, this was cheaper to manufacture than it was to have a solid fingerboard.  Seems hard to imagine when you consider the work that would go into doing this well. 

We had a fiddle come in last week that has a veneered fingerboard, but the top veneer actually peeled completely off.  Most of the time, the veneer is intact and it never peels.  What happens is that the veneer gets worn and the entire fingerboard gets replaced.  I thought it would be neat to post some pictures of what it actually looks like under the veneer.  You can also see how thin the veneered layer is.  If you want to see full-size pictures, just click on the picture and it will enlarge.