Salve Håkedal

... not to mention 5 sympathtic steel strings. Mechanical pegs is a real blessing for hardangerfiddlers!

Right, mendicus. But I actually used: 1000 * grams / (A + B)/2 * C * D which may be more easy to understand for me and others. The "1000" is just to get the decimals in the right place. "(A + B)/2 * C * D" is simply the volume of the wood. Someone else here on Maestronet pointed out in another thread: if the piece of wood has flat sufcaces, you can just measure the center of the piece instead of doing "(A+B)/2". But often the pieces is somewhat irregular and one will have to make an approximation of A an B along the piece to arrive at something almost correct.

Regarding this, I like Don Noons post here

I wonder if the singers in Stradivaris times strived for, or even knew about the "singers formant"? Another thing: An american folk fiddler (another "Bruce") once came into my workshop while I was rigging for taking bridge tapping tests on a fiddle. I proudly explained that I was investigating the response of my fiddle to try to raise the 3000Hz frequency region in the future. Bruce just said: "That's what they mix down in studio". And I felt like a fool. When my hearing finally gets bad above .. say 5000Hz, I guess I will appreciate some "singers fomant". But I can still hear the goldcrest and some grasshoppers. So, for some years more I might not need it.

OK. I had an friend who was an amateur maker. He insisted on using white glue, and the situation that you described was exactly what happened to more than one of his fiddles.

Which glue did you use for the neck?

I agree. Almost 30 years since I used it!

Hmm. That area has endgrain. I would think it has dried by now?

Thank you. But I'm not trying to remove it. I just wanted to put it on this forum to share some learning. I put the lighting for the photograph in a postition to make the effect as visible as possible. It's not really worrying me on this fiddle. I would have been worried if it had happened to me with an old Mittenwalder or something.

I built this (undecorated hardanger) fiddle in 1988. At the time I was reading Sacconis book. I did not use waterglass, luckily, but for some time I used what he recommended for isolating the water glass from the varnish: Gum arabic, honey, sugar and egg white as a ground. Under a spirit varnish made of propolis, shellac and sandarac. The arching on this fiddle was made rather steep at the neck block, so after 30 years heavy use the the table had come loose from the block. I opened it and put a piece of felt on the area close to the block area and moistend it with water over night and then let it dry well. The intent was to remove the deformation (.. kindof, I didn't use any pressure). I found it worked OK, so I glued the table back, and the fiddle is now doing fine, except.... maybe of interest to some: The moisture coming through from the inside left the varnish unharmed. But maybe not the ground? The reflection from the wood in the moistend area is now reduced. This should be seen clearly in the photo as a darker area. So I'm thinking of others instruments, some of them rather valuable, like old germans with a glue size ground or similar water soluble substances. Maybe this is a warning? -- Salve, from the backwoods of Norway.

Shellac is tough and Sandarac is kind of brittle, I think(?) But I'm not familiar with Manila Copal. Will it add softness/ductility to the mix? Or something else?

I would not accept any gap at all. And I don't "spring" the joint. With a well set up plane and bench you should be able to make "perfect" contact between the 2 halves.

TedN, of course your first violin was "horrendous"! Everybodys first violin is rather unusuable, i'd think. But to go to the other extreme: copying another makers method, even down to using his exact tools like you say you did .. well .. grrrrrrrr! I'm a self taught maker with some success. (Admittedly, I had woodworking skills already when I started on fiddles.) Of course I didn't do it in total isolation. Fiddle/violin making is something very traditional and one will have to bow to that fact to have success with the players. But I think I learned better by doing mistakes and learning from them, than I would have learned if I should have followed some other maker slavishly, being told "this works - this don't work", and probably not always get a good answer why. (Grrr.. we're all different.)

I do it by eye .. and see what happens!

I think .. "darker" is too undefined. But why would low density wood for the back give a darker sound. In my experience it don't.