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"soap if it sticks, chalk if it slips"

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Properly fitted pegs are a pleasure to use. Properly fitted are the operative words here. Many guitars, including some from shops that should know better, have poorly fitted pegs. The problem is often a mismatch between the taper of the holes in the head and the taper of the shank of the peg. Sometimes, especially on older instruments, tapers that are too steep to hold well are often encountered. You find this on old cheapie violins, too. Hard pushing or other forcing of a poorly fitted or otherwise mis-tapered peg can crack the head or the cheeks of the pegbox on a fiddle.
Direct wood-to-wood contact rarely works well and a small amount of a suitable lubricant may be necessary but copious amounts of soap, chalk and other goop are not a good idea. A small amount of a good peg compound like Hills or Hidersine should suffice on a well-fitted peg.
The current standard 1:30 taper (the shaft diameter changes by 1mm over 30mm of shaft length) that is used for violins and violas works well for guitar pegs. Cellos generally use a slightly steeper taper of 1:25. A 1:20 taper is often found on older fiddles that have not been re-pegged.

There are solutions. The holes in the head can be re-reamed and the pegs shafts cut to a matching taper using a matching peg reamer and peg cutter. Depending on the final hole size, new pegs may have to be fitted. The holes in the head can also be bushed (plugged), drilled and re-reamed, again matching the taper of the peg to that of the hole. Generally speaking, the narrower the diameter of the peg shaft, the easier and more sensitive the tuning will be. The way the strings are wound onto the pegs also makes a big difference. In the final tightening turns, the string should sit low on the peg shaft, close to the face veneer of the head. This gives you a good break angle over the nut. A string riding too high on the part of the shaft that protrudes through the head can have a tendency to pop the peg loose.
Get ye to a good violin shop that knows how to fit pegs. Most guitar shops know little or nothing about them.

Pegs do take some getting used to but it's a whole helluva lot easier when they work the way they should.

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... both pegs and peg holes can go out of round over time. When they do the pegs only catch properly in one or two places as you turn them, and can jam really hard. It's easy to feel when you've got this problem. The solution is to dress the pegs and the holes to make them round, as well as to have the right taper.

A lot of violin makers are using a 'spiral bushing' these days. You ream out the hole a bit over size. Make a long shaving of something like maple (it helps to dampen the wood first), coat it with glue, and wrap it around a cheap peg or a plastic taper pin. Use the peg/pin to force the wet glued shaving into the hole, and let it dry. Then you can drill out the peg, if necessary, ream the hole, and trim it up.

This sort of bushing has a few advantages over the traditional sort. One is that you take a lot less material out of the peghead, so it's less intrusive. Another is that the grain of the shaving running around the hole reinforces it, so it's far less likely to split. It also shows less, so it's easier to touch up. You can use something like hard maple or beech for the bushing, so it's a lot harder and wears better than the mahogany or cedro of the peghead.

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A number of makers include face grain hardwood plugs imbedded in the peghead as wear surfaces. They are totally invisible from the outside, stopping just short of the rear surface of the head and covered by the face veneer(s) on the front. Maple or beech are probably the most common woods but Ross Gutmeier told me about a Manuel Reyes flamenco that he had in his shop that had rosewood plugs.
The plugs are cut from flat or quarter sawn lumber using a plug cutter rather than just slicing off pieces of dowel. With dowels the peg hole would be drilled into end grain which would probably not be a good thing. Holes for the plugs, usually about 10-12mm in diameter, are drilled into the wood of the head, stopping just shy of the back surface (I use a Forstner bit to give me a flat bottomed hole) and the plugs are glued in before the face veneer is glued on. The peg holes are then drilled through in the usual fashion, reamed, and the pegs fitted.
It's strictly a personal thing but I tend to prefer rosewood to ebony for pegs. Really good ebony pegs are hard to find these days and even the best ebony is generally less stable than rosewood and has more of a tendency to go out of round with humidity changes, etc. The natural oils in the rosewoods also seem to help with lubrication.

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I recently had the pegs on a violin refitted and they work beautifully now. Beats chalk any day. I bought some of the planetary guitar pegs from Brian Burns at Xmas and they are even better. www.lessonsinlutherie.com

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ORIGINAL: gemelo

These ones I believe are a bit smaller and may be lighter but I have never used it. http://www.carlosjuan.eu/index.php?id=37