David Burgess

Slicing a newspaper is vastly different from carving wood. A wire edge can do a spectacular job of slicing newspaper, but will bend, or break leaving chips in the cutting edge, when using it on wood. Then your edge is junk after your first slice.

Mainstream player preferences are still pretty much the way they were 200 years ago, with the exception of strings, and evolving tastes in sound, which have trended in the direction of a more focused and less fuzzy sound.

Same here.

It gave his Japanese car an Italian sound. Just kidding. I guess his father (also a mechanical engineer) has been using it for years, with good results. Pretty good at penetrating existing rust, prior to drying.

Same here. In fact, I'm so much of a freak about keeping greases, oils and waxes off bare wood, that I used tung oil (which dries) as the rust retardant on the surface of my table saw, rather than using an oil or wax. Oh that reminds me, a mechanical engineer friend of mine sprayed linseed oil on the undercarriage of his car as a rust retardant. His idea, not mine.

What is a "knee" on the blade of a knife?

My conjecture is that this would have depended on how visible it was, and to whom.

Bow crack is known to be highly addictive. Get out before it's too late.

How come them old bikers get all the hottest gals?

Gotta watch out for varnish schemes which sound really good, but aren't.

When I was working alongside Johannes Finkel, I witnessed him gluing all sorts of stuff, with the outcomes being largely invisible.

I will tend to disagree, based on what little information we have from the photos. The shinier and smoother surface at the anomaly highly suggests prior glue application.

That's what I remember too. But there was enough unusual stuff going on with those fiddles, that I may have gone into brain overload and failed to remember everything. Back to the original topic: Mark, you could commute back and forth to Indiana University in about five hours each way, so you must accept your duty as the best candidate for the teaching job. However, should you take the job, I will lend you my car, which might cut the commute time down to as little as two hours, depending on traffic, and the amount of time spent in jail for driving close to 200 MPH.

Since your question is about varnish, and since the videos reveal little useful information about your varnishing process, it's difficult to provide useful commentary.

Well that's rather weird, on such a small viola. Hope that helps. Like Don said, give us the actual measurements, and we may be able to provide better advice.