Well, it was a busy summer, and I didn't have much time for building or posting, because I was spending most of my time composing and recording music for a contest here in Canada. I didn't win, didn't even place, but it was fun working on it. And when the weather was good, which wasn't often, I was out flying my model airplane or brewing beer.
Seeing that my last post here was June 4, reminds me of a joke: A grizzly bear walks into a bar and says to the bartender "Pleas
Eventually I ran out of Tom Clancy novels, and got over being lazy, and in February 2008 I finally decided it was time to get back to the project. First thing I did was take a picture of where things were at:
In the intervening 9 months, the back wood had straightened out, so I was ready to make another attempt at joining. Of course, I still didn't have a lot of experience with planing, nor sharpening, but I did some further research, including watching (many
The garland was done, now to work on the plates. Back first, according to tradition. Of course, I've never done any real woodworking before, especially with hand-tools, so this is all new to me. Especially the sharpening part. Especially with planes. And planing a perfect edge... well, let's just say that learning curve is STEEP! Of course, I'd read a lot about it, and in terms of sharpening, I'd read the Scary Sharp website, and had a book from Stanley (Lord only knows how old, it might b
So now that I had a half-template, I was ready to make the mould and proceed. Oh, if only things went right the first time, eh? I guess they would, if I were working carefully and paying attention. However, the first mould I made from that aluminum template (that I had spent quite a bit of time preparing), knocked me down a peg or two. I spent an evening carefully marking out the mould and cutting it out, and the blocks, and getting everything all ready, THEN decided to take some measurement
Once I realized that I didn't want to use Heron-Allen's pattern for my first violin, I decided, based on advice from a number of MN'ers, to order a poster from The Strad and use that as a basis. The poster I chose was the Kruse, from 1721. While I was waiting for the poster to arrive (there was also a delay in ordring it, because the Orpheus website was down for a while at the time), I decided to make some more tools, since I knew I'd need them anyway. First up was a few planes. I decided to
Okay, so I've decided to post the story of this violin from the beginning, including pictures. Don't worry, I don't plan to post every picture. I just figured it might be cool to have a record of this project where folks can see it if they're interested. I'll try not to post the boring stuff ("... and then I spent yet another hour scraping...").
Anyway, in January of 2007, I finally decided to go ahead and get started with this. I'd been thinking about it for quite some ti
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
