CSchabbon

Which brand of hide glue? Water to glue ratio? There are big differences in the quality of hide glue. It’s easy to make a glue joint stronger than spruce itself, to really test how good glue is you need to use hardwood

Actually carbon paper is safe to use with antique violins. No residue on the varnish.

Oil varnish you can apply with pretty much everything of medium softness. Sable, Fiber, I don't care. I just varnished my cello with a pelo du bue (ochshair) I bought in Italy 20 years ago, but also with Blick fine red sable. The later is too expensive for such a simple job. For restoration only ever Habico kolinsky sable brushes. The finest and best quality for a reasonable price.

Is a soundpost crack in the back and a chest patch also in the back really acceptable? Funny thing is that those issues were not in the condition report, but to their credit, the back crack was a very thin grey to black line, and the patch so big it covered 2/3 of the back, and was well stained and covered with dirt, so it was difficult to see. For the condition and for the size I guess it might just have been a little overpriced, and I rather doubt that it would have triple estimates in any other auction.

Maybe because of a post crack and the chest patch in the back?

I would not bother to repair the Stanley. The lie Nielsen is so much better you will not ever want to look back Jacob! Yes, I have both Stanley’s low and regular angle and the low angle lie Nielsen. I still use the Stanley to rough things out.

Thank you all, I ordered some aqua fortis, and I will try the Becker stain! Please keep posting, I am still very interested in hearing about long therm Nitrite samples!

Hi Michael, Did you ever try this ground? Do you have any pics by chance? Thanks C

This Rocca has a very similar stain on the inside as well as the outside with the exception of the top. What is it?

J.B. Vuillaume

What do you assume the Parisian makers at the time of Vuillaume used to stain the inside of their instruments? It seems to be a chemical stain that sometime develops more towards reddish brow. Also has anyone have a sample of decades old nitrite treated wood, preferably unvarnished? Many thanks in advance C

This thread is interesting. It's like a group of doctor being ask to diagnose a patient that they are not allowed to see or speak to but can only ask his friend questions about his symptoms. Let me ask a question here: How high is the bridge, and is the soundpost tight? Both of the could potentially choke the G.

Yes, upper and lower surface are like a dense fibreboard, kind of similar to ebony in hardness, the sides a like the sides of very dense fibreboard. Blunts your plane quickly. Then on the other side they are very close to final measurement and don't need too much work. I think timewise there is not much difference to ebony, maybe the corene boards are a little quicker to finish. Maybe corene can be called a black stained high density fibreboard.

Yes, they send small bags with glue with every single board, labelled 'bone glue'. I think they do that since they had complaints from people with boards becoming unglued, must be 3 or so years back. Sometimes I use their glue, most of the times just finely ground Kremer bone glue.

I have not had to remove any so far, I can only imagine it must be a similar experience as hide glue and ebony fingerboards. The interesting fact (after a lot of testing I did in 2019/20) is that bone glue is not the strongest glue out there by far, it just seems to adhere very well to corene. By the way, I also started using bone glue to glue on ebony boards. I believe that somehow bone glue bone glue suits denser woods, spruce is asking for a little longer glue molecules.