Nick Allen

I had this same problem. You have to use your knife as much as possible, and when you do sand, use a backed paper, and for the love of God avoid over sanding, as that will abrade the summer stuff first. The last sanding should be very light, just to get rid of the chamfers from turning the edge.

Just don't glue it. It's gonna be too short or too long at some point in the not so distant future. Then, you'll have a fixed SP that doesn't fit. Great. This is a terrible idea even on the humblest of student kits because, A: you candy do any adjustments, and, B: it'll probably be more likely to cause internal damage over time being fixed. Just don't do it.

We had a violin exactly like this at the shop I used to work at. It was a genuine Derazey that had the old man head, double purfling and marquetry on the back. The one that you took home doesn't seen to actually resemble the one that I had to stare at every day. The whole conception was just awful taste, but great execution.

I highly recommend at least sealing off areas of bare wood. Especially the upper bout ribs where your hand touches. If you don't, it'll start to go grey/green with dirt and sweat. You'll even deposit salty crystals into the wood that looks bad and clouds up the wood when sealed. To be honest I'd just have the areas of egregious and detrimental wear done. The areas on the back and top with nice subtle wear look quite nice to me. But that's just my opinion and take it for what you will.

Thanks! Ha. Yeah. I used portrait mode like a dummy. It's madder root and cooked colophony.

Here's another one varnished. My own recipe of colophony, mastic and oil with some madder root lake.

Is this only for the first post? None of those angles will match up in a year's time.

But why?!

I haven't had that problem this far. I don't think it could ever provide enough counterforce during gluing to crack the wood. But I haven't done hundreds of them to have a huge sample size yet.

It's the only thing keeping me from doing his method. The purfling channel seems to have to be dug out unreasonably deep to be practical for people with no power tools several centuries ago.

Did you enjoy cutting a six foot deep Purfling channel lol?

Plaster of paris, if slaked, should have the same refractive index as your varnish. It looks weird when it's on the instrument at first, but once it's dry and any excess has been rubbed/burnished off, it should take the same clarity as the varnish. Think of sprinkling powdered glass into a cup of water. Or even sugar, to a lesser extent for that matter.

That's how I do it. No faffing about by flattening the battens twice.

Yeah I forgot to mention that. Make sure the edge allows for this.

89g seems heavy, even for those grads. Perhaps you could start closer to a normal weight, then zero in on the right mode tunings?