Nick Allen

I would find a steady poster of the instrument that you want to make. But be warned, not all Strad posters are created equal. Some are great, and have almost all of the info you'd need to make a nice fiddle, while others are borderline useless. As a rule of thumb, try to go for the newer posters, as they will have CT scans sometimes, which are quite accurate. Then, watch Davide Sora's YouTube videos, all of them. They are one of the most amazing sources for violin makers around right now.

That looks like it's in the wood now. I'm not sure if there's any good ways to clean that out without removing varnish and having to retouch the whole way down.

You must have bough bass purfling or something if it's 3 mm wide. I have the same marker, and I took one blade out and use it single bladed. It's best to have two of those cutters, one for each side of the channel. Violin purfling should be 1.3 mm wide. There is see that's a little wider, like closer to 1.4, and some that's a little narrower, like 1.1, but most violin purfling is in that ballpark. A 2 mm channel will have the purfling banging around in the groove, and won't provide a secure means to hold it in there, especially in the spruce.

You and I probably have the same bending iron.

I think that all of the varnish fumes are getting to someone's head lol.

Your photos aren't showing.

To be honest, I thought that your design was quite elegant.

Lowering it should help alleviate the asymmetry issue. I don't know what you mean in step 3, though. Could you clarify?

Finally got around to cleaning and organizing the bench space. It feels so good to be able to work on a clutter free surface. Too bad I have a hard time keeping it that way...

To my uneducated eyes probably not. It may tell about the species of maple, which could indicate an origin, depending on when it was made perhaps.

Yeah. It's not a Maestronet thing. More of a Google thing. I'm one of the many scum of the earth that has AdBlock turned on at all times.

I was thinking the same thing. Might as well correct the projection, cut a new bridge, graft a new neck. So its a nice lil gem here. I wonder if the two bows that we're in the case we're any good too. Too bad I didn't get a picture!

This much I don't know enough about.

The thick blacks gave it away. But the neat purfling job made me give this one a second look.

I didn't see anything wrong with the button immediately, then again, I didn't look to hard. I figured that it was a better made Markneukirchen going off of the varnish and purfling.