Mark Norfleet

I agree with Davide and David. I hoped I had found a great solution to some frequent tuner troubles, but in practice they are a nuisance. I think I have a few if anyone in the US needs to prove it for themselves...

They probably do as it’s a refueling/rest spot for USAF missions.

My short take on this is that you won’t learn enough to make it worth the effort. I would let it die or turn it into a liquor cabinet.

Perhaps, and it’s hard to tell as there are not a lot of reflections in the picture of the back, but it seems to have much more arching than the thickness of any English viol back I’ve seen would allow for.

All of the Norman viols I've seen have had flat backs. I don't know of any English viols that had carved backs, and only a few makers of them from other areas.

Either one will leave a "film" as it "dries" if there is anything on the surface of the string. The oil is not evaporating, but is polymerizing and oxidizing and becomes less liquid as it does. Getting oil on the hair of your bow is not a good thing... Wiping it off the string will encourage growing hair, so it should be done very carefully. Of course strings are also often varnished to prolong their lifespan.

Fascinating. I didn't know he made anything other than viols. Thanks!

If you’re playing much at all, 6 months is a good lifespan for gut strings!

My thoughts and experiences exactly. The only times I’ve found something difficult to feather is when a layer of colored coating was extremely thin and concentrated. I have no doubt that the methods developed by Mr. Knight will be useful by many who repair such instruments.

You likely have. It doesn’t seem to take much.

Great, just another source of possible buzzing...

Michelle Ashley, Angela Styles, Kathleen Nikolai, Pam Anderson, Rowan Armour Brown. Ralph Rabin's partner Carol, who's last name I cannot remember. Peg Baumgartel; bow maker.

Yes! I remembered her name but didn’t happen to mention it. I knew she was well respected when I was there, but had no idea how long her time at the school was. Thank you Davide!

There were a number of women at the school in Cremona when I was there in 1975/76. One of the instructors as well.

And just how did you determine that the student instruments are varnished with "oil based polyurethane varnish" ?! I don't work on many "student quality" instruments any longer, but have in my time and believe you are mistaken.

These machines are capable of pretty amazingly detailed work, even when working from a paper pattern. Intentionally or not, Mr. Knight is not taking full advantage of his machine. I'll scan and post some examples of what they can do from a Deckel manual or catalog soon. RPM can be quite high on these machines, so chip load can be low, but yes, that is likely a factor (see above). They were originally used with single lip cutters and the company made some rather fantastic grinders for making and sharpening them.

I was happily ignoring this thread and will do my best to resume doing so... I've not read it all, but to respond to one of the OPs questions, I would put a modern style/size bar in it as I think that will give you the greatest chance of having it satisfy the owner or anyone who might play it that has any degree if skill or training. Presuming you're inclined to invest the time... For what it's worth I've made more than a handful of "baroque style" modern instruments, "modernized a few previously "baroque" violins and also played/heard a number of Stainers with bass bars that were near the original size and shape, a few with "modern" bars being used as "baroque" and heard one of the relatively unaltered Stainers mentioned above quite a bit and have played and adjusted that same instrument some. As a bit of an aside to an earlier comment, I don't trust recordings to always accurately represent how an instrument sounds in person. They can however certainly be entertaining.

Let us not forget the effects of work hardening and annealing…, not to mention the helix angle and other processing considerations for gut strings.

I wouldn’t be pleased either. I would however grab the violin first, even if it was yours.

Rather ungainly! I’m 4 feet from mine at the moment with a phone, but it’s disassembled…. I’ll find a decent image and post it.

Certainly C-C is defendable and unambiguous. Taking the measurements to asses what C-C is on an instrument is however highly impractical. Holding a scale on the outside of an instrument and trying to sight the location of the center of the soundpost isn’t a terribly accurate method, especially considering the variety of instruments someone in the business works with. I own many more measuring tools than any violin maker I know, and probably more than most machinists, yet I don’t have a good way to reach inside an instrument to measure the diameter of a soundpost, let alone transfer the location of said center to the outside in order to find its relationship to the center of the bridge. The traditional self made gauges people in the trade have, or a carefully used piece of card stock with a slit in it and a scale, are pretty effective and provide all the information we need. it’s not at all a bad idea.

Simply put, I think you should have taken more time with this and spent more time with your local expert. The quality of the finished work is far more important to me than the speed at which something is accomplished. You clearly know a lot about machining and how to get things done, but from my perspective you don’t know what you don’t know. Spending time with someone who does know what you don’t, and can guide you through this work in greater detail, is probably the best way for you to improve the quality of your work, if that is your interest.

Over rosining a bow is a rather common response to an instrument that doesn't respond well. Though you've clearly had many different strings on it and had the opportunity to observe if this would work or not, try cleaning the strings and see what happens. If it's immediately better and then gets worse, there is likely too much rosin on your bow. That said, trying to provide information here and following suggestions from the list participants, including myself, to find the root of the problem and fix it are just stabs in the dark. You might get lucky and hit on the solution, but I think your instinct to find a person who is good, experienced and will be dedicated to finding the solution(s) to your problem is the right way to go. Good Luck with finding that person!

Some list participants might require more than a small lid...