Michael Darnton

https://strumentimusicali.milanocastello.it/

Nevertheless, when referencing someone else's work it's important to get the details right.

So you assume, but not according to what I found. But that was about 35 years ago, so I can't provide a source. Sacconi would have said water glass, much easier to find, if he has meant water glass.

FWIW, I believe that Sacconi specified potassium silicate, which is not precisely waterglass, though certainly related.

If you use an airbrush you can spray not very much too-highly dilute spirit varnish from too far away, sprayed almost dry, and the result is a lightly frosted appearance that rubs out nicely with the palm of the hand to give a very natural look. The matte surface remains in whatever low spots you can't reach and the hand "polish" is like the healthy glow of a well cared for old violin that hasn't been aggressively polished. You can achieve anything from the look of limestone gravel to glass this way if you aren't careful; experimentation and experience help a lot towards achieving the best look and consistent results. It works best when you are adding the absolute minimum material so as to not change the underlying texture at all.

Worth noting in that context that linseed oil (and some oil varnishes) + skin chemicals = gummy black tar. Like on the head of this del Gesu that spent 40 or 50 years in a closet:

"Magical hands, indeed!" Are you absolutely 100% sure that the cert goes with that bow? Did you get both the cert and the bow directly from the person who wrote the cert? Normally cheek splits would be blow-outs to the side, near the widest part of the plug mortise starting just under the head plate, and this is VERY different from damage that would require a spline, in a different place entirely, so I can't make those two descriptions merge into something that someone might have seen and then changed their mind about.

Danger, Will Robinson: That's not ozone you smell, it's nitric oxide, a precursor to nitric acid (when it joins with water in violin wood, for instance).

Additionally, I have seen quite a few American violins from the mid 1900s when some makers were soaking the wood with oil to the point where I've seen oil stalactites inside, and that kind of oil treatment is definitely counterproductive to tone, but not exactly in the ways you might project in your imatination. Like anything else there's probably a sliding scale involved from 0 to 100.

I use the same long, sweeping-point 12 mm knife I use for cutting cello bridges. The sharpened part is 40 mm or so long, so the tip is quite thin and extended.

For a decade or two on and off I've been using an oil ground by putting a couple of drops of linseed oil in an ounce of turpentine, brushing that on and then immediately wiping it off. Let it dry for a couple of weeks, then repeat. The result is a total seal and the amount of oil on the whole violin sums to about five drops. Obviously there is no tonal effect whatsoever from doing this. I haven't decided how it looks in 300 years. I believe this procedure is consistent with Echard's observations. I have no reason to think that this is all there is to Cremonese ground, however, because I don't think it's going to replicate that ground in terms of physical characteristics (resistance to wear, especially). When the Barlow-Woodhouse work came out I wasn't the only one to note the very thin layer close to the wood that they didn't see or mention that looked a lot like oil. Restorers I showed the pix to immediately identified the "mineral" layer as pigment filled varnish, based on what they see, of what thickness, when cutting through the layers for repair. The idea that their thick, rubble-filled layer, the thickest layer on the wood outside of the wood, is invisible, as B/W suggested is, of course, ridiculous. Restorers also suggested that the thin upper layer that they called the original varnish was in fact the thin layer of modern varnish or polish coating that many restorers try to leave when doing a deep clean to avoid cutting through to the original varnish and damaging it.

https://darntonviolins.com/old-linseed-oil/ The experiment is still running. Nothing has changed; it's been the same since I started, 30 years ago.

https://www.amazon.com/10000V-Supply-Electronic-Transformer-Approval/dp/B0B698BCBQ

Let it be known that you really do want to buy a Strad AND HAVE THE NECESSARY MONEY and you won't have to leave your house. In fact, you may want to move to avoid the dealer riff-raff that start showing up with fiddles in tow. I think all of us have made trips for a lot less than a Strad, if knowing that the customer is real.