Fiddler45

Busy day as I finished dressing the board, made a nut, bridge, and post, and finished setting it up. I left the fb alone and put the bridge just a hair (1mm) north of the f notch. Scale length is ~331 mm. Plays fine and sounds better than I was hoping for as well.

Thanks to all for the responses so far!

Could you elaborate on why it would be fine for fiddle and not violin? Will it not play easily above say, 3rd position if....which scenario? I guess I don't understand exactly what your advice was to proceed. Imo, the 3mm at the nut is the biggest problem...having a potential problem fingering half position. Not worried about intonation in general with a 333mm scale...as Michael pointed out, there are no frets and I (hopefully others also) shouldn't have a problem.

Just that the top end of the fingerboard is further toward the peg box (3mm) than "normal" and that I had heard arguments of whether it was ok to have the bridge too far north/south of the normal mensur as related to tone and structural integrity.

What do you mean by "refining"? If you mean removing wood, that can be done without removing the bar. If you mean "adding wood", just remove the bar and make a new one the shape you want.

I am ready to start setting up a fiddle I repaired and am uncertain how to proceed. The fingerboard starts about 3mm north of being even with the tip of the volute of the back of the scroll; I am guessing that dead even is considered correct placement? Even being 3mm north of "ideal", the lenghth from nut to body is only 130mm. The stop length to the inner f hole notches is about 197mm. Now with the lean of the bridge, I would be over the usual 330mm I usually try for by a couple mm. (I placed a bridge there snd measured from end of board to top of bridge). So my question is, would it be best to a), cut a couple mm off the nut end of the fb and have a shorter "neck", b), leave the board alone and risk problems fingering half steps, and also have to place the bridge further north than normal on the body, or c), leave the board, and place the bridge in "normal" position and wind up with a scale of around 333mm? And no, I will not choose d), " throw it in the rubbish bin and work on something better". :)

Just saw this on ebay and I was like..."I just saw this somewhere.." Good luck!

Thanks Jerry!

Just basically that I had no idea how to go about fitting tips that didn't already match the bow contour...all I knew from almost no experience was that heating and just bending didn't work. I have replaced two tips that DID fit the bows I was practicing on, and those turned out great. Just trying to advance past kindergarten level.

Thanks for all the info everyone! Now I'm gonna.....well.....not quite sure yet...

So when heating the tip...I read on the old thread here that some people boil the tips to soften them. On this thread, just references to heating them. How is this done? I know a few years back I tried just heating one with a flame and ended up just discoloring it and then it snapped like a twig when I applied any pressure to try to bend it. (With no jig of any kind, however).

So does one shape work well for different bow tips? For example, if the tip is almost flat, just bend a little, if more curved, use more of the bend in the fixture by clamping harder? I did see this on Lynn Hanning's site...but at that point you're tight...might as well just make some.

When I googled this, a thread ftom MN came up, but not much was said about this particular item. Since calling Howard Core directly didn't help, my question is, this is for shaping the tip prior to gluing it onto the bow, not for clamping the tip to the bow while gluing, correct?

This is the only problem I'm having wirh rehairing....when talking of "undercut", which direction and which end.of the tip are we talking about? As you go down into the mortice, is it cut more forward toward the tip the deeper you go on the tip end of the mortice?