It's amazing sometimes how naive one can be, even as an adult. My desire to make a violin goes back quite a ways, and in 1995 I was sufficiently far along that I began a journal. Looking back at it gives me a chuckle - it shows just how little I knew then. Of course, it was "only" another 12 years before I actually did get started on the project, and what I've found out in the past year really puts this old journal to shame. Anyway, I thought I'd share a portion of my entry for October 4, 19
Last night I was cutting the linings for my violin. At one point, I had a strip of wood about 25mm wide and 2mm thick, and I was cutting it into 7mm strips with an X-Acto knife. Cutting the last strip, which involved holding a metal ruler along its length with my left hand, and cutting with my right. Of course by this time, it was really thin, and I was concentrating on making a nice straight cut, so I didn't see that my thumb was sticking out a bit where it shouldn't be. Found out pretty qu
This is my first blog, which is kind of funny because I've been a software developer for over 30 years, and have spent most of that on the bleeding edge, so you'd think I would be one of the first to try new things, but there you go. Of course, I am the first member here to create one here on MN, at least, so that's something. Not sure if what I post here will be of interest or not, but here goes. It'll be interesting (to me at least) to see how this thing shapes up, and what the software's c
Arrrrgh!
The post office broke a violin I thought I had securely packed.
- I placed wedges of styrofoam under the bridge
- material under the tuners to protect the belly.
- The instrument was strung with the sound post up.
- I had wrapped the body of the violin to take up
slack in the old case
-I wrapped the case with bubble and placed it in an oversized box.
Last Friday I took my Ole Bull (number 6 violin) to a violin shop down in the city. I didn't send it to Oslo because of the price of shipping. The owner didn't like much about it, except he thought the archings were nice. Score one for me.
He didn't care for the varnish, thought it was too thin (Joe I have to get back to you!). Uneven overhangs bothered him, purfling that was broken and pushed back in was frowned upon, and he just didn't get purposly putting the scr
There has been a big looseleaf binder on the floor next to my favorite chair
that collects my favorite references for violin building. I has grown unmanagable.
I have decided to extract the most important that I view daily in a slimmer binder
and perhaps a folder for each current project. What's in the binder?
-Records of the density of wood I encounter.
-Data on weight of string instruments and their com
I've learned so much since I built this first composite violin that I had to go back and correct a few things.
Redeemed was completed in Nov 2008. The fingerboard fell off after a few weeks and in January of 2009
the neck popped off. There was a learning curve to working with hyde glue and being timely with clamps.
This summer I noticed a crack in the top under the fingerboard. An old repair had come undone.
My agenda:
