Brad Dorsey

Yes.

When was yours made? In 1991 and 1998, Skinner sold a 1913 Callier violin made in St. Louis.

Jerome Thibouville-Lamy was a musical instrument manufacturer in Mirecourt, France. The lyre design was a JTL trademark. Your violin was made around 1890 to 1930.

Neither. The usual process is to bend (with heat) a straight piece of wood, after planing it thin enough.

What do I think about it? I think you should restore it and enter it in a violin competition.

What do we see through the hole on the bar? I can't tell. Do what? I can't tell what that is.

"Deft" is both the product name and the brand name. Some restorers use it as a varnish filler. But, as Jacob warned, if it is used under the bridge feet, the feet will stick to it, and it will be torn off the wood when the bridge is removed.

If you mean that the finger board is wider than the neck at the nut, you should trim the board, and the nut, flush with the neck with both of them glued to the neck. But before you do this, you should make sure that the finger board projection is correct and that it is lined up with the bridge. And before you do this, you need to make sure that the bridge is correctly positioned. And before you do this, you might want to check that the bass bar is correctly positioned. And if you want to move the bass bar, you should probably also regraduate the top. What has been carved too deep?

Perhaps you are thinking of Deft.

A customer of mine, who is a knowledgeable dealer, has commented that the hair in some bows that I recently rehaired for him has a "slight bulge" on each side where it leaves the ferrule, rather than being a ribbon with a uniform thickness. This must be a result of my wedging technique: With my fingers, I spread the hair, near the head, to a uniform-thicknessed ribbon, of a width perhaps 50 percent wider than the inside of the ferrule. Then I insert a fine-toothed comb into the hair where I have spread it, run the comb down to the frog, and drive the wedge into the ferrule with the comb. This would put more hair at the edges of the ribbon, at the ferrule, than in the middle. I have always intentionally tried to put more hair at the edges, because I have observed that that's where the hairs most often break. From this customer's comment, I am wondering if I am over-doing it, or if I should be doing this at all. How do folks here do it? Do you aim for a uniformly thick ribbon at the ferrule, or do make it thicker in some places and thinner in others? Do you spread the hair wider than the ferrule with the comb?

Yes, after Jacob explains dust-ballology.

Oklahoma City, Bavaria?

Measure what?

It would be rejected because violin making competitions only accept instruments made entirely by the entrants. They wouldn’t accept a “cheap trade instrument” that was “really…someone else’s work” and that you “didn’t actually build.”

A box cutter is not an appropriate tool for this. You would probably remove wood where you don’t intend to and end up with an irregular rib top surface. You should use a plane. Another alternative, if the neck is removed, is a sheet of sandpaper glued to a flat surface. Even a file would be better than a box cutter.