sospiri

All you need now is a screwdriver and a bag of soot. I happen to live in a house with an original 400 year old chimney if you're interested?

Agreed, well done Jackson. I think he was searching for the holy grail of violin varnishing, like me, a missing link between the 17th and 18th century. A red like yours but with the physical properties of flexibility, toughness and hardness.

Michael what is going on with Don's rosinate? Are carboxylic acids deprotonating to carboxylate anions, thus stabilizing? Is it a risky process, or is the simplicity Don and Jackson describe possibly very reliable?

Dirty antiqueing... dark stain applied with a sponge in 5 minutes. Any soft focus photos I see by companies immediately signal false advertising, even if the price is considerably lower than this.

Which particular species do you have in mind?

Are you going to return it to the rightful owner?

What would Boris say about that?

Those f holes in the Jalovec drawing are nothing like Maggini.

Do it yourself. It can't be any worse than my new neighbours VSO which is a term I rarely use. Hers had a plywood belly. So I have leant her one of mine and a bow. It was the least I could do because she has been saying nice things about my playing. Of course we could both be completely delusional?

Speaking of Christmas, the belly is made from Christmas trees and if you have lots of poplar and maple and a very tall Christmas tree... oh at least 100 feet, then what more do you want?

He was a big Jazz fan. You could say that his 70s music was an extension of Jazz for a wider audience.

What do I see? Crappy photos out of focus.

Millions of good to to very good musical instruments have been made in China over the past 30 years. As previous posters have noted. And yes, they are handmade. And moreover the workers are very highly skilled.

Not true. You're out of touch with what has been going on in China for the past 30 years.

Hi Ian. I don't know, what is the difference between a fiddle and a violin? What is the difference between a fiddle and a violinist? Anyway, all the music we hear is folk music. Even the avant gardists were folkies desperate to prove otherwise. They were just too lazy to do the 10,000 hours to develop the technical skills.