Don Noon's bench

[Herman West]

The Noon Sun is a nice touch, please consider keeping it!

[Jim Bress]

1 hour ago, Herman West said:

The Noon Sun is a nice touch, please consider keeping it!

For what it's worth, I agree.  I prefer both the old design and font.  If I ever start stamping my bridges I will just use my name and save the location for the label.  Definitely keep the sun.  Even if it was raining the one time I was in Carlsbad. 

[Don Noon]

The logo is just a drag and drop to the laser burner, so I can let a customer decide what they want.  I'm not deleting any artwork.

[Jeff Jetson]

I prefer  the bridge stamp with cursive script and the Sun symbol because it is so different from the norm.

[Chris Llana]

13 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Thanks for the photo, Don.  I was having trouble visualizing the old bridge's 4.7mm tall "spindly" legs versus the new 6mm+ tall "much thicker" legs.  I had associated "spindly" with tall, and "much thicker" with short and squat.  The photo helps me understand the quantitative nuances of bridge geometry conventions.

[Don Noon]

It has been over 2 months since I posted anything about my new builds.  Spring has slowed things down:  with the rain we had this year, a ton of yardwork had surfaced.  And battling with software to try to model the plate arching has yielded no visible results, in spite of consuming time.

The forms and counterforms are all done, and I have blocks installed and hardboard templates cut out to check layouts on the wood for the plates.  This family is all very closely related.  The small, medium, and large violins are in length steps of 3 mm, and width in 0.5 mm increments.  I am even using the CNC and sanding arbor to shape the blocks accurately.

There are two identical viola forms, as I have orders for two of them near on the agenda... and it wasn't that much more work to make a second one, once I got the CNC going on the first one.  A small violin will be the third instrument of this batch.  The medium and large violins will be for later, but made sense to make the forms now while I was geared up for it.

Next will be picking out the wood and making ribs, and then the plate work will resurface.  For now, it looks too formidable to program the CNC precisely for what I want, so I'll probably end up roughly hogging off most of the wood, and perhaps establishing a few precise arching lines with the CNC, and finishing the arch by hand as usual.

[Don Noon]

As long as I had the jointer fired up to join the backs for the next batch of 3 instruments, I figured I might as well keep going and join ALL of my 2-pc maple backs.  Should be enough to last me for the next 10 years, at my current dismal production rate, although I do expect to ramp up a bit in the near future (I think I have been saying that for the last 10 years).  BTW, those non-rectangular sets I cut out of a few cello billets, and wanted to get the maximum sets possible.

I can't imagine how long it would take me to do this with regular planes, or if I used anything other than the rub joint method of gluing.  It took a day and a half to plane the wedges flat, cut the joints, and glue them all up.  It will probably take another half day to plane the joined sets flat (nice to have a 12" power jointer).

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

As long as I had the jointer fired up to join the backs for the next batch of 3 instruments, I figured I might as well keep going and join ALL of my 2-pc maple backs.  Should be enough to last me for the next 10 years, at my current dismal production rate, although I do expect to ramp up a bit in the near future (I think I have been saying that for the last 10 years).  BTW, those non-rectangular sets I cut out of a few cello billets, and wanted to get the maximum sets possible.

I can't imagine how long it would take me to do this with regular planes, or if I used anything other than the rub joint method of gluing.  It took a day and a half to plane the wedges flat, cut the joints, and glue them all up.  It will probably take another half day to plane the joined sets flat (nice to have a 12" power jointer).

Don

Are all the backs torrefied? Some of the matching halves have a noticable difference in color. 

What species are in this batch.

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, lpr5184 said:

Are all the backs torrefied? Some of the matching halves have a noticable difference in color. 

What species are in this batch.

These are all torrefied European maple.

With the exception of the half with the black splotches (which are from chamber drippings before I changed to the new chamber), the difference in color is entirely due to the lighting and how the wood reflects.  I didn't believe it myself until I flipped some of the extreme cases around, and the light and dark halves switched.

[scordatura]

On 5/5/2019 at 5:13 PM, Don Noon said:

It has been over 2 months since I posted anything about my new builds.  Spring has slowed things down:  with the rain we had this year, a ton of yardwork had surfaced.  And battling with software to try to model the plate arching has yielded no visible results, in spite of consuming time.

The forms and counterforms are all done, and I have blocks installed and hardboard templates cut out to check layouts on the wood for the plates.  This family is all very closely related.  The small, medium, and large violins are in length steps of 3 mm, and width in 0.5 mm increments.  I am even using the CNC and sanding arbor to shape the blocks accurately.

 

The blocks in the above pic are really dark. Is this the result of being extra torrified?

[Don Noon]

58 minutes ago, scordatura said:

The blocks in the above pic are really dark. Is this the result of being extra torrified?

The endgrain of torrefied wood is like a light trap, and looks very dark.  There are no flat cell walls to reflect light, just edges.  Some of the corner blocks ARE extra-torrefied, though... they don't need to be very strong, and I think lighter (density) is better there.

[scordatura]

4 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

The endgrain of torrefied wood is like a light trap, and looks very dark.  There are no flat cell walls to reflect light, just edges.  Some of the corner blocks ARE extra-torrefied, though... they don't need to be very strong, and I think lighter (density) is better there.

Has anyone tried balsa for corner blocks? I know that Doug Martin has used balsa in his experiments.

[jezzupe]

On 5/5/2019 at 2:13 PM, Don Noon said:

It has been over 2 months since I posted anything about my new builds.  Spring has slowed things down:  with the rain we had this year, a ton of yardwork had surfaced.  And battling with software to try to model the plate arching has yielded no visible results, in spite of consuming time.

The forms and counterforms are all done, and I have blocks installed and hardboard templates cut out to check layouts on the wood for the plates.  This family is all very closely related.  The small, medium, and large violins are in length steps of 3 mm, and width in 0.5 mm increments.  I am even using the CNC and sanding arbor to shape the blocks accurately.

There are two identical viola forms, as I have orders for two of them near on the agenda... and it wasn't that much more work to make a second one, once I got the CNC going on the first one.  A small violin will be the third instrument of this batch.  The medium and large violins will be for later, but made sense to make the forms now while I was geared up for it.

Next will be picking out the wood and making ribs, and then the plate work will resurface.  For now, it looks too formidable to program the CNC precisely for what I want, so I'll probably end up roughly hogging off most of the wood, and perhaps establishing a few precise arching lines with the CNC, and finishing the arch by hand as usual.

My, what large lower blocks you have, I'm sure they get trimmed down, they are a tad larger than I start with, not that it matters because we know your having great success , meh' just something I hadn't noticed before.

[Don Noon]

1 hour ago, scordatura said:

Has anyone tried balsa for corner blocks? I know that Doug Martin has used balsa in his experiments.

I'm sure someone has used it, and I see no problem with that.  I just have tons of extra spruce, and I don't think that it's a big deal one way or the other for the corner blocks.

1 hour ago, jezzupe said:

My, what large lower blocks you have, I'm sure they get trimmed down, they are a tad larger than I start with...

I want them wide enough to prevent rib crush from center-mount chinrests, and I do sculpt the thickness down later.  I also add support struts to the ribs on the bass side of the block in case sidemount chinrests are used.  I don't think extra mass at the endblocks hurts performance any, and could actually help in some ways.

[jezzupe]

51 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

I'm sure someone has used it, and I see no problem with that.  I just have tons of extra spruce, and I don't think that it's a big deal one way or the other for the corner blocks.

I want them wide enough to prevent rib crush from center-mount chinrests, and I do sculpt the thickness down later.  I also add support struts to the ribs on the bass side of the block in case sidemount chinrests are used.  I don't think extra mass at the endblocks hurts performance any, and could actually help in some ways.

I tend to agree, and also add rest "beefing" I've seen enough crushed ribs to definitely see a benefit. As for the mass, yes it makes "scientific" "engineering" sense, which I have noticed goes with "acoustic" sense. we want the "flagpole" to have a heavy base that tapers up to the top, not the other way around, so to me your block acts as a stout foundation for the "ball" at the end of the flagpole, and probably does have a benefit. 

It is one of the reasons I've always been a big fan of your work, everything seems to, or has to make logical sense.

[Don Noon]

Ribs all attached, but no linings yet.  I apply ground to the ribs after bending them, but before gluing to the form (to minimize glue ghosts).  I made up a new ground this time, using pontianak resin in solvent, with a few drops of dye added to give it a bit more color.  Even so, almost all of the color you see is from the wood itself.  They will look a lot better when varnished.

There's no great research behind using pontianak... I got some a while ago to test, so I have it, and it seems to work in the solvents I want to use.  My cooked colophony doesn't want to dissolve in anything.

After the linings, there will likely be a long pause in the progress while I wrestle with trying to figure out how to model and tool up for plate roughing using CNC.  I had started looking into it about a month ago, and decided there's no way I can (at this stage of novice operator) mill out anything close to what I want to end up with... so it will be just used for hogging out most of the wood.

[Michael Jennings]

Don, sorry but what is Pontianak .... other than a city in Indonesia???

[Don Noon]

8 hours ago, Michael Jennings said:

Don, sorry but what is Pontianak .... other than a city in Indonesia???

I bought it as "pontianak resin" from Woodfinishing Enterprises several years ago, but I don't see it listed now.  

Obviously it is my super-secret unobtainable key to the ultimate tone, which nobody can ever duplicate.  Or not.

[Michael Jennings]

[James M. Jones]

On 5/25/2019 at 8:02 PM, Don Noon said:

Ribs all attached, but no linings yet.  I apply ground to the ribs after bending them, but before gluing to the form (to minimize glue ghosts).  I made up a new ground this time, using pontianak resin in solvent, with a few drops of dye added to give it a bit more color.  Even so, almost all of the color you see is from the wood itself.  They will look a lot better when varnished.

There's no great research behind using pontianak... I got some a while ago to test, so I have it, and it seems to work in the solvents I want to use.  My cooked colophony doesn't want to dissolve in anything.

After the linings, there will likely be a long pause in the progress while I wrestle with trying to figure out how to model and tool up for plate roughing using CNC.  I had started looking into it about a month ago, and decided there's no way I can (at this stage of novice operator) mill out anything close to what I want to end up with... so it will be just used for hogging out most of the wood.

Don, have you looked into any sort of scanning probe ? With one a guy could hand carve what one desired,pop it in the machine, then scan or probe into the GCode  , ready for what would seem to be simple edits to the program for margin and what ever small changes might be desired. They even have hand held laser scanners and ones that work with rotation available. But to my mind the touch probes seem more cost effective. ....nice work. 

[Chris Llana]

Google produced this page from Woodfinishing Enterprises: https://woodfinishingenterprises.com/shop/natural-resins/pontianak-resin/

Not sure if you could actually order it. 

[HoGo]

On 5/26/2019 at 3:02 AM, Don Noon said:

Ribs all attached, but no linings yet.  I apply ground to the ribs after bending them, but before gluing to the form (to minimize glue ghosts).  I made up a new ground this time, using pontianak resin in solvent, with a few drops of dye added to give it a bit more color.  Even so, almost all of the color you see is from the wood itself.  They will look a lot better when varnished.

There's no great research behind using pontianak... I got some a while ago to test, so I have it, and it seems to work in the solvents I want to use.  My cooked colophony doesn't want to dissolve in anything. 

After the linings, there will likely be a long pause in the progress while I wrestle with trying to figure out how to model and tool up for plate roughing using CNC.  I had started looking into it about a month ago, and decided there's no way I can (at this stage of novice operator) mill out anything close to what I want to end up with... so it will be just used for hogging out most of the wood.

I see you are quite generous with extra width or ribs... Is there a reason? I find it easier to plane them close to final height before bending and gluing together.

If you have difficulty creating 3D models for your roughing, perhaps I can help, feel free to PM me. I've created lots of drawings in 2D and some 3D models of mandolins, violins in Rhino (though never attempted to have them cut in 3D, mostly 2D cutting of forms, templates and such).

[carl1961]

Great work as usually they look great wonderful. Have you seen this guy's work, he is doing a CNC violin. He said in this part  15 video that he will have his stl files available.

 

[Don Noon]

On 5/27/2019 at 7:14 AM, James M. Jones said:

Don, have you looked into any sort of scanning probe ? 

No, I haven't.  That's not the way I'd want to go.  If I can't model it geometrically the way I want, I'd rather just use the CNC to hog out most of the wood (with crude gometry), and finalize the arch and graduations the old way, mostly by eye.

8 hours ago, HoGo said:

I see you are quite generous with extra width or ribs... Is there a reason? I find it easier to plane them close to final height before bending and gluing together.

If you have difficulty creating 3D models for your roughing, perhaps I can help, feel free to PM me. I've created lots of drawings in 2D and some 3D models of mandolins, violins in Rhino (though never attempted to have them cut in 3D, mostly 2D cutting of forms, templates and such).

The ribs are all the same height, just a little taller than the end block.  So there's a lot of extra at the neck block.  Maybe it's easier to narrow them earlier in the process; I'll think about it while I shorten them this time.

Thanks for the offer.  I think I can do the 3-D roughing models well enough, as I gathered from my last brief attempt.  It's just the near-finished, channeled and blended arch that looks orders of magnitude more difficult than my current state of expertise.

5 hours ago, carl1961 said:

Great work as usually they look great wonderful. Have you seen this guy's work, he is doing a CNC violin. He said in this part  15 video that he will have his stl files available.

Yeah, there was a thread about this group a while ago.  Their arching is terrible, driven more by their method than the actual violin they are "copying".  Although they DO use the same modelling software I have, I don't want to use their method.

[Don Noon]

Annelle Gregory from yesterday, still playing #21.  This was from an awards concert, where she picked up the first prize for strings.  I'm not too thrilled with the audio quality of the recording, but the video and performance are fine.