Michael_Molnar

Jim, If you check my handout from the Thrift Workshop I used to buy my Burgundy rosin from Scents of the Earth in Cape May, NJ until they doubled their prices. WFE is now a better buy. I also like Strasburg turpentine and Canada Balsam, but they are expen$ive. By the way, a rosin contains resins.

I received a question about aligning plate edges with ribs on a garland. The first photo shows a garland still attached to the form sitting on a template. In the second photo, the garland is removed to show the underlying template. I drew the template in CAD and printed on a wide-body printer. The red external trace is the initial plate shape with tie-down pads. Next in black is the final plate shape followed by the rib and form shapes. The QC paper template is glued to a flat tempered glass plate. I find that I have to check each step during construction to ensure that the plate overhang will be uniform. Some makers like Strad shape the plate and purfling channel after the plate is attached to the garland. I match the garland and plates to the template. The trick is to take time ensuring good alignment and not rush the work. It's all about Quality Control (QC).

I too recall Thrift's remark that my cooked rosin needed to be darker. I haven't had time and good weather to see what I could do next. Keep in mind that I do not advocate pine rosin. I use fir or spruce because these produce better color namely red.

I do this to keep the fingerboard cool. Ebony gets very warm in my cabinet.

Here is another great site with wonderful photos about washing linseed oil. Don Jusko is a first class artist and gave me some great information about dichromatic pigments.

An interesting experiment would be to put a baroque bass bar back in the original violin and see how it performs. We are presuming that the old bars produced good results. Again, there are so many other variables that would affect the results.

You guys are not reading the article. You are making a water-oil emulsion. Add lots of salt and pool sand to extract the white wax and consolidate the oil.

Jim, Check Tad Spurgeon for great information about linseed oil. IIRC, you need to "burn" off the wax if you do not wash the oil. I used to wash my Swedish linseed oil until I discovered Varnish Maker's Linseed Oil. This is cleaner and works.

Right. And this too would greatly reduce its stiffness. Those bars were wimpy by modern standards.

The bar in Hargrave's photo is (was) 250mm long. That is not very short, but it is highly tapered making its effective length much shorter than modern bars.

All are very clever.

I tend to agree with Roger. My original point was that most makers often use a standard one-shape-fits-all bass bar pattern. However, I think there is always room for experimentation and verification of what could be dogma.The frustrating issue is doing a controlled and repeatable experiment. My data too turned up noise, but I now adjust the bar height to bring the ring mode to a reasonable target ≥350 Hz. Before I did this, my violins were all over the acoustical landscape. I am now investigating the mode pattern. It could be a dead end, but I won't know that until I convince myself and not someone else. As for the low, thin baroque bars, did these work only for the baroque setup? I am also intrigued by the different bass bar shapes Roger depicted for arch heights. This is an invitation to experimenting.

This looks very good. It's a lot like what I get. I have some cooked rosin on my bench that I may try to reheat and cook even more. When the weather improves, I'll give it a shot. Glad you had no health issues.

Your reply proves my point about you.