Deo Lawson

I'm sure experts will drop their two cents but my understanding is that the wood is so old that nobody has a complete idea of what the heck it was like when it was fresh, besides the obvious (grain spacing for example). Wood gets lighter with age, does it not? Among other changes. The fact that the oldies also often come with a patchwork quilt of repairs on the inside doesn't help.

I would suggest using the template as a guide and freehand adjusting the final shape according to your eye. After all, the most important part is how it looks on the instrument, not on the drawing.

Ordinary strings will work fine. May want to use the light gauge where available.

"High-performance acoustic accessories line: End buttons, endpins and BELTON stoppers for violin, viola, cello and double bass, built in titanium, silver, carbon fiber and composites. Cosmetic line of multi-protective creams for wooden and brass musical instruments: Formulated with 100% natural-vegan active ingredients specifically developed to clean, protect and maintain delicate varnishes and lacquers, metal strings, pegs, ebony fingerboards, piano keyboards, brass surfaces and other essential parts" All I can say is: lol My condolences to whoever bought that vegan protective cream and smeared canola oil all over their trumpet. But on second thought, some people might find that handy.

Can confirm, feels real good. And I get tons of dumbfounded looks at school. "You built that? ALL of it? Even the fingerboard??" For some reason fingerboards are a point of contention

There's no steel string that would get to B. Highest I've seen steel go is A before snapping, on a violin or guitar.

If you're just past the sealer stage you could lightly rub in a bit of powdered charcoal. Best to do it after sealer so you have a chance at wiping it off if you don't like it. You could probably also just add a bit more varnish in those spots.

I meant removing an existing neck.. fitting a dovetail is easy as pie. The way out isn't

If I had to reset or replace the neck on a dovetailed instrument for any reason, I think I would just spare myself the pain and shoot myself.

I have not experienced problems french polishing oil varnish. If your technique is good the solvent will evaporate too fast to damage the oil. Even if your technique is not so great, probably still, because alcohol does not immediately destroy oil varnish like it does spirit varnish. That said I have also stripped oil varnish with alcohol.

"Mmph-age" is exactly what it sounds like. When you floor it, it goes. I am a player first and a maker somewhere down the list.

Yeah they aren't *fully* transparent, however being faced with the task of making a purple violin left me with few options In any case, there is such thing as transparent enough.

Mixing in oil paint will work but your varnish will be a little gummy ( I have tried it). Perhaps it would give good results in a varnish that is very heavy on the resin and dries hard. I think glazing with oil paint would not be the way to go—mixing with varnish is better. You can also buy transparent artist pigments, which are just the stuff mixed into oil paint to get the colour, only without the oil. This is what I do now. I tried dyes once and they faded very fast.

I have to agree with your findings, Don, that violins with no recurve feel stiff---in my fairly limited experience anyway. The professionally made violin that I own sounds good, but has always been a difficult player. Likewise my self made violins are not the most responsive, even after I've gone through and adjusted everything to the highest level I can (bar, post, bridge). As a player I feel that none of my instruments efficiently distribute the energy of my bow, and it reflects back into my hand. I plan to make a new plate for one of my instruments, incorporating a much stronger recurve but keeping everything else the same. Maybe I'll report back to this thread when I finish that project.

Hello, I'd like to gather some opinions about the area of negative curvature around the egdes of the plate arch. Having been around many different fine violins at my school, I've noticed that a lot of the professors (who are also working performers in the classical sphere) play on instruments with a very strong recurve in the arch. Sometimes even to the extreme... it looks like the center of the plate is bulging out like a beer belly. Of course they play on very nice sounding instruments which were carefully selected to project in a hall. In my builds so far I used a fine violin that I own as a reference. However, this violin does not have a very strong recurve, so neither do the instruments I made. None of my instruments approach the volume of those professional violins. Now I know that I am focusing on a small sample size and a very specific characteristic, but somehow, intuitively I get the sense that the recurve is vital for increasing mmmph-age of a violin. I'm curious what professional makers think.