Worn-off Violin Corners?

[David Burgess]

27 minutes ago, duane88 said:

Sadly, that is the first thing I thought, too.

Guys, that's a promo, uploaded on Feb 5, 2020, featuring footage from pre-pandemic events.

[duane88]

Just now, David Burgess said:

Guys, that's a promo, uploaded on Feb 5, 2020, featuring footage from prior events.

No, I was lamenting the fact that the maskless aspect was the first thing I noticed as opposed to the other things in the video. Perhaps I am getting old.

[MarkBouquet]

2 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Guys, that's a promo, uploaded on Feb 5, 2020, featuring footage from pre-pandemic events.

I knew that, and I was just kidding about the masks. Having said that, there’s something appalling about delighting in tearing up our Mother Earth like that. It’s kind of embarrassing. And I don’t mean to point the finger at you either, Mr. Burgess. I’m guessing that you weren’t there. You were just demonstrating  your talent and aptitude for sarcasm.

[David Burgess]

21 hours ago, MarkBouquet said:

I knew that, and I was just kidding about the masks. Having said that, there’s something appalling about delighting in tearing up our Mother Earth like that. It’s kind of embarrassing. And I don’t mean to point the finger at you either, Mr. Burgess. I’m guessing that you weren’t there. You were just demonstrating  your talent and aptitude for sarcasm.

The event is held on privately-owned land. This does not free the owner from the need to get environmental protection permits, or the need to restore the land at some future time.

You are right, in that I have never attended one. But I may, at some point in the future. It might be almost as exciting as a fiddle convention.

A lot more of the natural environment is altered, just by building a few houses, let alone a subdivision.

[Bill Merkel]

San Fran dissing Poplar Bluff's impact on the environment...

 

[David Burgess]

2 hours ago, Bill Merkel said:

San Fran dissing Poplar Bluff's impact on the environment...

 

Yes, how weird is that? Someone from San Francisco (much of which is built on unstable landfill, resulting from attempts to increase the land area by dumping dirt into the bay) trying to diss a li'l theme park over supposed environmental concerns?

[Bill Merkel]

And how weird is it when San Francisco needs to let its hair down   I went through Poplar Bluff on a lazy cross country trip and I remember it because it was a great place.  Don't recall the mud run. Nice little town layout and lots of forest

[Violadamore]

On 11/21/2020 at 3:46 PM, MarkBouquet said:

........there’s something appalling about delighting in tearing up our Mother Earth like that. It’s kind of embarrassing.

You referring to how cities like yours are disgusting cancers vampirizing the rest of the planet? 

[MarkBouquet]

6 hours ago, David Burgess said:

The event is held on privately-owned land.

OK. We had a 19th century phenomenon here in the Sierra foothills of California called placer mining. It silted the rivers, Sacramento River delta and San Francisco Bay, essentially for all time. It suppressed the salmon and steelhead runs so they’ve never been the same since. (Millions of years of salmon and steelhead runs were the very reason California had a fertile Central Valley, and coastal forests like nowhere else in the world. The fish were the fertilizer.) The scars in the foothills will remain for thousands of years.

Some people recognized from the beginning that placer mining was an environmental tragedy, but it took many years of lawsuits to stop it, and by then the damage was done. The argument of the placer miners, through all the years of lawsuits, was that it was their private property, to do with as they wished.

My original point, and you’re entitled to disagree, I guess, is that awake and aware human beings should care about about this planet. It should hurt to see it torn up for no other reason than to entertain some, and profit others.

 

[Bill Merkel]

Would it help if it was called harmonic something and it was hippies instead of rednecks?

[Violadamore]

4 hours ago, MarkBouquet said:

OK. We had a 19th century phenomenon here in the Sierra foothills of California called placer mining. It silted the rivers, Sacramento River delta and San Francisco Bay, essentially for all time. It suppressed the salmon and steelhead runs so they’ve never been the same since. (Millions of years of salmon and steelhead runs were the very reason California had a fertile Central Valley, and coastal forests like nowhere else in the world. The fish were the fertilizer.) The scars in the foothills will remain for thousands of years.

Some people recognized from the beginning that placer mining was an environmental tragedy, but it took many years of lawsuits to stop it, and by then the damage was done. The argument of the placer miners, through all the years of lawsuits, was that it was their private property, to do with as they wished.

My original point, and you’re entitled to disagree, I guess, is that awake and aware human beings should care about about this planet. It should hurt to see it torn up for no other reason than to entertain some, and profit others.

 

The reason why the Central Valley is so fertile is that it's been a sediment sink for the mountains rising around it since dinosaurs walked the Earth, collecting the deposits of weathered minerals necessary for rich soils.  Any hypothetical salmon runs would have been a minor, and very late, contributor to its current fertility.

http://www.sjvgeology.org/geology/

The urban development of Southern California sucking the rest of the state dry with repeatedly expanded water projects, combined with replacing forests with concrete and manicured lawns, as well as the massive release of pollutants from urban areas, has done more damage than placer mining ever could.  Y'all keep sticking Band-Aids on your hydrological disaster, rather than looking in the mirror and reversing urban growth. 

Starting to wish you hadn't smugly picked this argument, which didn't belong here in the first place?  

 

[MarkBouquet]

Oh, is that right, vda? https://fishbio.com/field-notes/the-fish-report/stinky-salmon-natural-fertilizers And prior to placer mining, the Sacramento River was deep water navigable to Sacramento. Now the Federal government spends a couple hundred million $ per year dredging it to keep it marginally open, and to control flooding from the annual spring runoff. And might I point out that your article was last updated 11/12/20, ten whole days ago, and a lot’s been learned about California geology since then.  And we were talking about corners on violins until David B. Posted a video about scantily clad young women riding off road vehicles around in mud. How was that related?  I can’t believe this place.  

[W.C.]

1 hour ago, MarkBouquet said:

And we were talking about corners on violins until David B. Posted a video about scantily clad young women riding off road vehicles around in mud. How was that related?  I can’t believe this place.  

This is why I love MN so much!

[W.C.]

On 11/21/2020 at 7:21 AM, jacobsaunders said:

One can see (on the Widhalm example), since all 8 corners are of the same character, that they were created so, and they are not the result of 200 years of “wear”. If they were all the result of “wear” they would all be different. Otherwise it is tantamount to believing you can get two separate accidental dents in your car, exactly symmetrically, one on each side. One is tempted to ask if you believe in fairies.

I think one should bear in mind that the Cremonese violins with the ugly sharp square corners are the exception rather than the rule.

 

On 11/21/2020 at 5:48 AM, jacobsaunders said:

Thank you for the example and the explanations Jacob. I think I now have a good understanding of what I was looking for . 

[Bill Merkel]

2 hours ago, MarkBouquet said:

 I can’t believe this place.  

When you aren't objecting to somebody digging a hole in the ground a thousand miles away from you?

[Violadamore]

2 hours ago, MarkBouquet said:

Oh, is that right, vda? https://fishbio.com/field-notes/the-fish-report/stinky-salmon-natural-fertilizers And prior to placer mining, the Sacramento River was deep water navigable to Sacramento. Now the Federal government spends a couple hundred million $ per year dredging it to keep it marginally open, and to control flooding from the annual spring runoff. And might I point out that your article was last updated 11/12/20, ten whole days ago, and a lot’s been learned about California geology since then.  And we were talking about corners on violins until David B. Posted a video about scantily clad young women riding off road vehicles around in mud. How was that related?  I can’t believe this place.  

The link you post is "science journalism" advertising drivel from a fisheries and environmental consulting company. Your cost estimates are grossly exaggerated, even considering the entire S. F. Bay channel network.  The original (and, by modern standards, questionable) navigability of the Sacramento has been primarily compromised by flood control and water diversion projects, requiring artificially maintained bypass channels for modern freighters.  All of the major (and continuing) tampering with the river has been due to Federal and State funded projects, not private industry. 

However unrelated David's mudbogging post was, your response to it was even more so, as well as deliberately inciting.    Anyway, paddling Burgess for his indiscretions is pointless.  He enjoys it too much. 

 

[GeorgeH]

On 11/21/2020 at 10:21 AM, jacobsaunders said:

I think one should bear in mind that the Cremonese violins with the ugly sharp square corners are the exception rather than the rule.

You mean like these "ugly sharp square corners?"

[jacobsaunders]

34 minutes ago, GeorgeH said:

You mean like these "ugly sharp square corners?"

Yes, although I concede that that is a subjective estimation

[David Burgess]

13 hours ago, MarkBouquet said:

 We had a 19th century phenomenon here in the Sierra foothills of California called placer mining. It silted the rivers, Sacramento River delta and San Francisco Bay, essentially for all time.

Yes, the early unregulated California gold rush practices of sluicing (without a settlement pond) and extracting gold from streambeds were pretty destructive.

As for the off-road vehicle venue, I suspect that very little dirt or sediment leaves the site. For example, the truck-washing station drains into the mud pit, so the dirt and mud get recycled for re-use. How cool is that?

[MikeC]

On 11/21/2020 at 1:40 PM, duane88 said:

No, I was lamenting the fact that the maskless aspect was the first thing I noticed as opposed to the other things in the video. Perhaps I am getting old.

You're getting old!   LOL   

[Nick Allen]

I'm becoming increasingly disenfranchised here. 

So do corners naturally wear? I vote yes. 

I can't tell you how many Violins I've touched up that have had no finish left on the corners or edge work, allowing wood fibers to be pulled or rubbed off. I don't think it always comes down to them being busted/pulled off or even intentionally abraded down. 

That being said, I also agree with the observation that when Violins have all eight worn the same amount, then it's obviously antiquing or a stylistic choice. 

[JacksonMaberry]

I'm with Jacob - the widhalm corners are infinitely more compelling to me than the Messie's rigidity. As musical tools, of course a violin should sound and perform. As objects d' art, they should be provocative and engaging to the eye. There's always going to be subjectivity involved in such judgements and I have no desire to change anyone's mind to my way of thinking.

Apropos of the digressions, it's exhausting sifting through all of the posturing and schoolyard gouging that goes on in this forum. No-nonsense contributors like Jacob have my appreciation and respect. Those of you who come here just to show off how smart you are and get one over on anyone you can, should consider, as a colleague might put it, "buggering off".

 

[W.C.]

On 11/21/2020 at 3:30 AM, jacobsaunders said:

Therefore one should ask oneself to what extent the corners (particularly when all 8 are the same) were originally made like that or not. Not every violin started life with sharp Messie style corners. Many were nice comfortably rounded off friendly looking ones

Upon my research I have found a few examples, of which all eight corners are rounded to an extent, so (even though they appear to be very old) most likely a stylistic choice.

While we are at it, from the pictures below, can we draw any strings to particular maker / school / region?

And interestingly, the two different violins, to my untrained eyes, seem to have very similar corner and edge work (correct me if wrong)? Is it possible that they are from the same maker (though based on different models, which you can tell from different f hole and shape)?

(I have no definite answer, as these are just pictures I searched on the internet, not from any violin archive).

 

[David Burgess]

4 hours ago, JacksonMaberry said:

I'm with Jacob - the widhalm corners are infinitely more compelling to me than the Messie's rigidity.

That's not unusual, since most Strads have much more wear, and very few people will ever run into a Strad as well-preserved as the Messiah. Taste tends to be influenced by what one has been most exposed to.

MVGA (Make Violinmaking Great Again)

[jacobsaunders]

16 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

That's not unusual, since most Strads have much more wear, and very few people will ever run into a Strad as well-preserved as the Messiah. Taste tends to be influenced by what one has been most exposed to.

Besides the odd scratch or dent, or lump smashed off, isn’t it ridiculous to suppose that some sort of magical friction (“wear”) randomly softened all the metre or so of total edgework all the way around evenly. You do believe in faries!