Nick Allen

You might be able to scrape that off.

I really love your work! Especially your red-brown varnish that has so much depth and luster. Weird question, though. What is the make of that bridge blank in the picture with the holder? I really dig the cut of the blank.

On new pegs? If you're building new, or installing a fresh set, I go with slightly off-center towards the head. It makes it so the hole isn't super close to the narrow end wall once the pegs compress and end up pushing in a couple of mm after a few weeks.

Looks pretty good to me. Certainly better than my first.

You can just spray glue some 80 grit to a sheet of melamine and move on with your life after 5 minutes. I got 2 rib assemblies flattened and tapered in under ten minutes the other day. For the taper on the upper blocks to the neck block, just put a ruler down and ride the Garland on that for a few strokes and voíla.

Not necessarily. I know many professional makers who don't bother with a plane on this step. It's what gets fiddles made faster that matters, and that's different for each maker.

Jesus H. Christ. What a truly horrible publication that was.

I have two minds about cutting down. On one hand, if those historic villas and cellos we're never cut down, they might not have survived the test of time and perhaps had been forgotten because of their unwieldy carapace. On the other, it is modifying an original work, and can lead to bad things if not done properly. But I take no ethical stance. Violins are not living. If a paying customer wants their instrument modified, I don't see any ethical lines that have to be crossed. It's an interesting process that takes much skill and knowledge to accomplish.

Eventually you'll ditch any numbers and just doi it all by eye and feel. The only indicators that I use are how thin it dribbles off of my brush and how warm it feels between my fingers. But different strokes. I use a pretty medium glue mix for basically the whole violin. The only job that I use thinner blue for is gluing the top on. The key is setting up your clamps for optimal speedy gluing. I'll usually preheat center joints and neck sets. Sometimes fingerboards if I feel like it. I think what's also super important that is often overlooked is the amount of glue you lay down. Too much can really complicate things.

Then I suppose Strad should never have changed the model from the Amatis?

What's with all the hate? I think it's fantastic.

If you post these on the luthier exchange here you'd have an easier time selling them.

If I were making a copy of a certain instrument, I'd have to make the distortions as close to my interpretation of the original shape as possible. Hopefully, the instrument will warp into something similar in time. But I suppose the templates provide some kind of reference for working that out.

Probably either bad touch up that's turned black or poor antiquing.

Calling these tool marks is quite a stretch.