BassClef

Please also upload some photos showing the tool marks

Thank you! Beautiful work in my amateur judgment.

Point taken, happy making.

I didn’t realize you have been making violins for so long! Have your tool marks evolved over the years?

Dwight, I always enjoy your posts.

No judgments here, thanks for contributing! Nice work.

Tremendous, thanks for dropping your trousers and giving us a peek, if you know what I mean.

Wonderful, thank you!

Thank you! You are a bona fide master and a good sport to boot. I will lower the temperature on my end also in hopes of others posting their work as well. Thanks for steering this thread back to an educational path.

That’s true, not all tool marks are as obvious and easy to photograph as mine which took me all of 1 minute to photograph and upload. At the same time it wouldn’t be difficult to photograph the tool marks as shown on the Amati that Sora posted.

Thanks for stepping up and letting us have a peek behind your curtain. I take back the part of anyone here perhaps being ashamed of their tool marks, whether or not it is true.

Thank you for your informative and constructive comments!

Cheers

You can go back and search yourself, I am not your assistant. You can start with Manfio's response where he suggested some tool marks are the result of inebriated luthiers, unsharp tools, dark conditions etc. which all sound like mistakes to me. You seem to have time to read and contribute to this forum, taking a photo with your phone and hitting upload only takes a minute. I am not expecting you to contribute any images though, no worries.

If you think they were unavoidable and bad, speak for yourself, not for me. I am asking questions trying to learn about tool marks. I am learning from this thread that many makers if not all find tool marks to be not bad, even if avoidable. Also that despite the skill level of the maker, tool marks are unavoidable if not sanded down or if the maker has to spend too much time being exact.

I imagine the makers are fully secure with their work, not afraid of questions. I have never criticized any work by any makers on here. It’s a touchy subject I see. Rather I have highlighted the works by makers on here when given the opportunity. It is other members and makers themselves that have been critical on this thread about certain tool marks.

Mind you when I am done barking it will have my personality all over it which is what the essence of barked trees are, this is the quintessential mark of a barker if you will.

I see it rather differently, the makers appear to defend tool marks as necessary and parts of their personality yet none want to show examples of their own tool marks almost as if ashamed of them. The collective defense of tool marks as not being mistakes or incompetence doesn’t fit with a lot of responses by some of the makers as well as I have highlighted, maybe I have struck a nerve and am asking too much. Have a good day Burgess, (I am not sure of your preferred pronoun). And nowhere have I asked for anyone to justify tool marks, at least that was not my intention, more like I wanted to understand why they exist and if they are avoidable.

Thanks for your post. I am trying to discuss something I don't understand about making and everyone's responses are helpful. Before yesterday I had not given it much thought and most topics about making have been discussed to death on here multiple times over. It is curious to me however that every maker defends tool marks as unavoidable and part of their personality and yet none have posted examples of their own tool marks. Cheers.

Are any makers able to make channels with uniform width? If so doesn't this speak to a certain lack of skill shown in the example you posted? Or maybe he didn't care?

I wonder how Mr. Hargrave would describe the mint Pochette that you linked to. Perhaps he would identify flaws that others would notice more readily after the varnish has worn down. Thanks for this.

Thank you for this reference. It sounds perhaps that GDG did not lack patience, drink too much while carving, work in unsuitable lighting conditions, or with tools that were not sufficiently sharp, leading to mistakes that might be more noticeable under the varnish. Is this fair to say?

Yes I agree, Painting and violin making is not a good comparison in the context of this discussion.

About violin making you wrote "The maker never wants to make an asymmetric instrument, or leave tool marks" - I imagine that Van Gogh did intend to make a "thick tridimentional" painting.

These all seem like mistakes/incompetence to me.