Conor Russell

My favourite were old horn combs, but the teeth wear out, and junk shops, where you’d find them, are a thing of the past. The horn grips the hair a bit. now I’m using half of a double sided plastic nits comb, and it’s every bit as good.

I use old forged shell reamers sometimes, to match an existing taper. They work well, and can be easily sharpened, but they’re much more difficult to direct than the modern reamers. I’d probably chuck the collar. You can mark the reamer with a pencil.

Water can make the job more difficult, as it softens the glue and swells it and the wood, limiting its penetration of a wide joint. It’s useless for example when removing a fingerboard. Alcohol, allowed to wick in from the tip of a brush, will dehydrate the glue and pop the joint. I use it opening edges too. Soaking old cracks with strips of kitchen towel overnight will soften the glue and allow it to be washed away with warm water, without further damaging the wood. I use cold water.

Eliseveldt, I usually make purflings for small instruments in wide strips, about the depth of a violin rib. I make them from veneers, scraped to thickness, and glue them with hide glue over an inside form. Then I cut them into strips with a marking gauge. I get about three violins worth each time. For cellos, I fit the purflings as three loose strips. I put the glue in the cut with a syringe, and wiggle the strips as I knock them in. The glue works its way up between them.

That’s very interesting. i had a Perry violin here that seemed very clearly made in the Mittenwald tradition. It was branded and labelled correctly, and the maker was following the Perry templates, just as a local outworker would have done. I supposed that Perry had had it made, and imported it. I think it was dated about 1810. I wonder were the English bow makers doing the same. The Dodd bows I’ve seen often have wider diagonal facets, and file marks on the stick, especially behind the head. I wonder what the stick work is like on the German bows?

I wasn’t aware of German bows branded Dodd on both frog and stick. I’ve seen more ordinary bows branded on the stick alone, but never with a convincing brand.

As far as I remember it can be had from a sausage making supplie.

Many of the great old violins have lost most of their varnish, and a great expert once told me he thought they lost it in their first ten years. Nowadays, it can be pretty ugly, but without a shoulder rest or chinrest, and a suspension case, the varnish would, I think, wear much more generally, and look much better. I consider tough, durable varnish to be inferior, not that I’m sure I’ve come up with anything better. I sometimes have instruments come back like the one above. If the ground is nice and dark, it’s often enough to wash back the goo with water, and tidy it up a bit, but I’m cautious about varnishing over before the process has reached a natural limit. i have a cello I made in 1996 coming in soon to be completely revarnished. After thirty years the thing is still sticking to the poor man’s legs on warm days!

I think making long strips works well, but they can be a pain to cut into slices. If you roll them tightly in gummed paper tape, and let the roll dry, you can saw thin slices off without them chipping or flying across the room. I made a little circular saw table with a dremmel for this.

I remember years ago violin expert said to me that the difference between a Strad and a skylark was about 2mm and a different varnish. I'd be very impressed if ai could ever reliably identify a particular maker, given that no two instruments are the same, if they’re made by hand. If my instruments were scanned, it might surmise that there were several hundred Conor Russells living in Wicklow in the late twentieth century, some of whom seemed to be drunk.

Like David, I plane the tilt on the top surface of the block. But the pegbox is marked out and squared to the block itself, true to the centreline at the heel of the neck. after the fingerboard has been glued on, I cut the block where the nut sits away with a sharp chisel, so that the nut sits down level with the pegbox walls. So the pegbox walls are the same height, and the step up to the tilted surface is hidden where the nut and fingerboard meet. its the same when you’re fitting a neck graft. The graft underneath the nut will have to be lowered to match the original pegbox.

I think it's very important to tilt the planed surface of the neck, rather than trying to accommodate the tilt in the fingerboard. A thick edge on the a side will look heavy, and a thin edge on the c side will look hungry, especially as the board is dressed over the years. I make cello fingerboards about 7 along each edge, with a bend at the end of the neck, a very slight angle planed in to the bottom surface, so that the edge remains even over it's length, reflecting the scoop in the playing surface. I prefer a flat under the c string, and though other makers have given me all sorts of reasons not to, I've yet to have a player complain.

I was thinking the same thing. Just the reflection of the glazing bars in the window. But I definitely need new glasses.

I have, once. What seemed like a fine dark grain line, that cracked in the making. I suppose it was a flaw in the growing tree. My advice - scrap it, and use another piece.