Roger Hill

I have suspected for sometime that my 2,000 pound 2 hp Bridgeport type mill is under powered (i.e. not sufficiently manly) for many violin related tasks.........

These animations may be helpful: http://www.bormanviolins.com/modalanalysis.html

It doesn't help the carving of the scroll, it hinders it. The marking of the turns of the scroll is best done with the point of an awl, then each point darkened with the point of a sharp pencil. Then the saw cutting near the turns can be done more accurately, without having serrations which the remnants of the countersink produced by a drill will leave.

Thanks, David. Very helpful. I should be able to fabricate something like that. Your explanations, along with all of the others, should let me solve my gouge sharpening problems.

For David and Davide: The key to the sound method of angle setting is the hollow grind of the cutting edge. How are you doing the hollow grind itself? If freehand, I don't know that I have any gouges that I am ready to sacrifice to education........

If I am ever to be in Ann Arbor, I'll show up at your shop with gouges, stones, etc. and enough good beer to have plenty available to pour on waterstones if you think that might help...........

David mentioned gouge sharpening in one of the threads regarding CNC use. I would like a little more information from our senior makers as to how you sharpen your gouges. I used to shave with a straight razor and have a small fortune in water stones and know how to use them for razors. When you are using the water stone for gouges, is your motion purely rolling the gouge convex edge side-to-side with the gouge held at its edge angle? Or do you also use a rolling push along the axial direction of the gouge? The only way I have found decent results with the concave portion is to wrap #2000 wet and dry paper around a dowel and do a back and forth motion. For stropping, I use green paste on MDF for chisels (in purely away from the edge motion) and similarly on a dowel rod for the interior surface. Just not getting as sharp as I would like. Thanks for any suggestions you may have. Roger

Another interesting ground idea is provided by David Ouvry on his website. He uses a Montmorillonite paste (perhaps bentonite clay, aka kitty litter?) as both a ground and interior sealer. Montmorillonite is noted as one of the components of one of the DE products in the link Michael provides above. http://www.violin-maker.co.uk/construction.html

As an FYI, the problem was completely rectified by Kirsten Lloyd at The Strad (kirsten.lloyd@thestrad.com). My last email from her is below: Dear Roger, Well, thank goodness you have now reached not just a conscientious individual but perhaps the most conscientious team there could be. Thanks for your feedback regarding the email addresses. I will investigate all of these and take action forthwith. We do appreciate this kind of feedback, so that we can make our services more efficient in the future. The Strad Shop has recently moved on to a new platform owing to the massive success of the products. It appears that a couple of the old email addresses have not been getting through to my team. Thanks also for alerting me to the Maestronet thread. Perhaps I should elaborate a little about the people here at The Strad: the team here pride themselves on working late, night after night and pouring hours of work into creating the magazine so that we can provide excellent content for our readers. Likewise, the team will go the extra mile for the customers at The Strad Shop if need be. I distributed the Maestronet email to everyone in the team here, who needless to say, went home very heavy-hearted. They were very sad to hear your story and especially to discover that they did not have the chance to solve the issue of your missing poster. We are all passionate about our work and operate to the highest standards; everybody here gets involved in every corner of The Strad. So I’m sure The Strad team will be waiting to hear some positive news and that faith has been restored in the brand. I personally posted your missing poster over to you yesterday and I’ve sent you a copy of Trade Secrets 4 for your trouble. With all best wishes from The Strad team, Kirsten

I ordered the Vieutemp poster on May 25. Got a flimsy triangular shipping box 4 weeks later. It was empty. I have sent emails to sm-systems@nsqm.com (returned as undeliverable) and services@thestradshop.com (no response). Will now try customerservices@thestrad.com and hope that it encounters a conscientious human employee. If anyone else has a different strad email address that they have had success using, please post so that I can try it also. Thanks

If you TRY to read through all that, you may already have Alzheimer's

We have lost wit, wisdom, good humor and a willingness to share all. I will miss him greatly.

Huh? Could you simplify this to the point that an over-educated dolt can understand it?

Your market must be a lot more sophisticated than ours here in Colorado Springs. Sarah Chang played here about three weeks ago. Our newspaper devoted as much space to how she acquired her del Gesu from Isaac Stern as it did to her talent, background, etc. I can't name the last violinist we had here with our Philharmonic who didn't play one or the other. My enjoyment of visiting violinists here goes back to Zukerman when he was 19 years old. Certainly, up and coming soloists may not yet have one, but if they are ambitious they certainly aspire to one for the credibility enhancement it will provide. It seems like every time I visit one of their websites, the violin they play is prominent feature.

not to mention that the audience is paying to hear a prodigy, young, old or in between, play a Strad or del Gesu. The musicians aren't in a very good position to argue with the wisdom of the crowd.

Thank you, Luis. I appreciate your willingness to share not only what you know, but also what you have that is unavailable anywhere else......

Hi Luis: Could you send to me also? Thanks,

Must have used polar coordinates. Those would, of course, be North Polar Coordinates, as I do not believe there to be igloos at the south pole........

I do hope that you used a rotated catenary as the arching form.............

Been a couple of years since I've looked at Strad 3D. Put in the disc, it wanted to update Flash so I did that. Now everything I try to do brings up the reminder popup that I need latest Flash which I now have. Have turned off ad blocker. Cannot get beyond the Flash message. Any ideas? Thanks p.s. in my first professional job there was the first axiom of programming: "software left unattended deteriorates" 55 years later I am reminded not to challenge the truth of the ancient axioms.

Speaking of mumble jumble verbal garbage, the technically minded among you will find much entertainment in this information being passed on to grateful audiophiles by one member of the violin community. Note that there is a choice for English at the center of the third line on each page. http://www.ennemoser.com/c37theory.html

"I wear the chain I forged in life, I made it link by link, yard by yard" My Bridgeport-type mill weighs more than a ton, the Monarch lathe 3,600 lbs. Some double sided carpet tape and a Safety Planer make short work of rib thicknesses, etc .but I suppose that they could make my time in hell seem longer than forever dragging them around............

It is more than just a little bit important to go counterclockwise around the plate, i.e. left -to-right. Draw yourself a little picture of what is going on at the point of cutting. If going left to right, the cutting edges on the bit are pulling the entire machine mass into the plate, which also sets the sideways force against the cutting tool/bit and the groove self relieves the sideways force on the bit as it cuts. If going right to left, you must push the cutting tool sideways (across the plate) in order to make the bit follow the curve, instead of having the bit pull itself into the curve and hold the apparatus tight to the edge. You are bound to overdo the sideways force at some point. Try it and report back.

Double sided carpet tape holds ribs just fine, whether planing or using the safety planer on the mill. When combined with a duct tape/mdf kluge to hold the shop-vac nozzle where I want it, it is an elegant kluge indeed...........

That picture has, of course, been Ben Conover's avatar for a good long time now................