First Violin Feedback, Thoughts

[Guest]

For a while now I have been working on making my first violin. After a lot of research, work and failures I have completed it. I would like to thank the members of this forum for their invaluable help they've given me. This violin is just merely the beginning for me and hopefully the mistakes I made, while making it, will be a lesson for the more to come.

Below I have a few photos of the violin.   I would really love to know your honest opinion and criticism about it and any comments on what you might have done differently. I will gladly accept negative feedback, since it will help me with my work. I aspire to do this professionally so this is no time for "kindness" 

[Brad Dorsey]

Looks good.  My only criticism is that the black outlining of the volute and the peg box looks overdone -- too dark or too wide.

[jacobsaunders]

Congratulations, very good. You should start the second one now, before you forget what you want to do differently next time

[violinsRus]

Looks better than the first few I made, congrats. 

How is the neck angle?  The end of the fingerboard looks a trifle close to the belly, and can possibly drop lower with time.  A common problem on the instruments I've made, which results in high 'action' and/or low bridge cut.  And certainly has tonal effects, although I'm not sure what effects!  :-)

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Brad Dorsey said:

Looks good.  My only criticism is that the black outlining of the volute and the peg box looks overdone -- too dark or too wide.

Thank you I agree, the black chamfer is a bit wider than I wanted it to turn out. The chamfer looked relatively fine before coloring it but then with the color it appeared quite bigger. Probably about 0.5-0.6mm that I wanted it to be. 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

Congratulations, very good. You should start the second one now, before you forget what you want to do differently next time

Thank you,  I will as soon as possible. The next one will hopefully be at Cremona.

[rudall]

I would say that the neck is too white and the varnish at the top and bottom should be tapered/feathered out instead of ending abruptly. 
 

See my avatar for a perfect example of a blackened chamfer on the scroll!

[Guest]

7 hours ago, violinsRus said:

Looks better than the first few I made, congrats. 

How is the neck angle?  The end of the fingerboard looks a trifle close to the belly, and can possibly drop lower with time.  A common problem on the instruments I've made, which results in high 'action' and/or low bridge cut.  And certainly has tonal effects, although I'm not sure what effects!  :-)

I appreciate the kind words. You are correct it is quite closer than what it should be. The angle should be right just the whole fingerboard is moved parallel to where it should be by about 2mm or so. The neck overhang at the root is around 5mm instead of 6.5mm and the projection at the bridge about 25.5mm to 27.5mm So the angle of the fingerboard is about the same. However because I wanted to keep the string action around 3.5 mm (E)- 5.5 mm (G),  I had to cut the bridge a bit shorter so the string angle at the bridge is more obtuse (flat). From what I've read it is often said that this makes the sound less powerful. However I found quite the opposite. I played on the violin before shortening the bridge and having the action quite high and it had a thinner sound and less powerful compared to what it was when I lowered the action.

 

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, rudall said:

I would say that the neck is too white and the varnish at the top and bottom should be tapered/feathered out instead of ending abruptly. 
 

See my avatar for a perfect example of a blackened chamfer on the scroll!

The neck isn't that white in real life. I did notice that it looked quite white in the pictures. It is not however. It is quite darker and more yellowish. I need to pay more attention to the white balance in my camera's settings  You are right about the varnish that should feather out. I wasn't really sure how to do that properly so I left it as is.

[Nick Allen]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:54 PM, Nestor Vassiliou said:

The neck isn't that white in real life. I did notice that it looked quite white in the pictures. It is not however. It is quite darker and more yellowish. I need to pay more attention to the white balance in my camera's settings  You are right about the varnish that should feather out. I wasn't really sure how to do that properly so I left it as is.

I've taken to finishing the neck after the violin is varnished. I finish the heel and chin with spirit varnish after the fact. You can get a superb look this way. Like that classy restorer look, as if it's been reset and touched up at a high-end shop. 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

If you are going to use serial numbers on your labels, I suggest starting at 541 instead of 1.

[Greg Sigworth]

Looks nice. Thanks for sharing the whole process. Photos don't always show the true color so this may be not true. Inside the f holes the color is the same as the top. I have begun to use artist oil paint with a darker tint than the top color, not black. I also do the same for the inside of the peg box. Still working on the shade I like best. That might be an idea to consider. If you have access to good modern makers, what do they do? The scroll is very nice, maybe a bit bulky. I do that sometimes; maybe because of fear of removing too much and a desire to get it done to hear the sound. The width of the peg box walls may be a bit thick, something I am working on. How does it sound? Nice work!

[Greg Sigworth]

I forgot one other thing. Something I have come to do. Where the varnish ends and the neck continues, on both chin and heal ends. After I apply the varnish on the violin where it ends on the neck, I take my finger or thumb and pat where it ends to remove the sharp line produced. This blends the color change from violin into the "bare" neck. I makes a better look. I hope I explained that properly. Again, very nice work!

[David Burgess]

Nice job Nestor.. better in my opinion than the work of some people who have been making for a long time.

If I were to make a first suggestion stylistically, it would be to shorten the upper corners to better match the lower corners.

[Richard4u]

On 1/9/2023 at 9:25 AM, Nestor Vassiliou said:

For a while now I have been working on making my first violin. After a lot of research, work and failures I have completed it. I would like to thank the members of this forum for their invaluable help they've given me. This violin is just merely the beginning for me and hopefully the mistakes I made, while making it, will be a lesson for the more to come.

Below I have a few photos of the violin.   I would really love to know your honest opinion and criticism about it and any comments on what you might have done differently. I will gladly accept negative feedback, since it will help me with my work. I aspire to do this professionally so this is no time for "kindness" 

I would finish the f-holes and the peg-box.  Do you have a way for us to hear it? 

[GrayM]

That looks like an excellent start! What was your learning process? Did you take any classes or self learn?

[Davide Sora]

Hi Nestor,

being your first violin I'd say you did a nice job. Stylistically I agree with a better balance of the corners, probably shortening the upper ones and slightly lengthening the lower ones, and to lighten the scroll, which is actually a bit bulky, including chamfers.

Of course, for the next one you will have to take better care of the projection and the angle of the neck, in order to improve also the bridge which seems a bit "compressed".

[Torbjörn Zethelius]

On 1/12/2023 at 7:19 PM, David Burgess said:

Nice job Nestor.. better in my opinion than the work of some people who have been making for a long time.

If I were to make a first suggestion stylistically, it would be to shorten the upper corners to better match the lower corners.

Funny, I was thinking of making the lower corners larger to match the upper corners. The 'problem' with the upper corners is that they look a bit too fat IMO. If I may say so. Nice work Nestor.

[Andreas Preuss]

Your work shows good skills in tool handling. What you need to work on from now on is to coordinate your tool skills with your eyes to smoothen out the different imbalances and achieve a more natural flow of lines.

Besides the size of corners I would say that you should pay attention to flow of the purfling line in correspondence to the outline. Your purfling line at the corners looks ‘uncontrolled’ and does to me not harmonize with the corner outline. On the top this becomes most visible at the lower treble side and upper bass side corner.

For the scroll, well the blackened chamfer looks too heavy, but this happens always because before coloring it it doesn’t look so heavy. Old masters blackened the chamfers with charcoal before varnishing, which made corrections still possible by carving fractions of the line away.
 

What is most difficult in scroll carving is to give the lines an optical dynamic speed. Your volute line is somehow ‘static’ to me. Studying many pictures of classical scrolls is for this very helpful. 

The f-holes have a clean cut. You didn’t make the beginners mistake that the stem got too straight and stiff. I wouldn’t round off the f-nick so much, you could even leave it absolutely sharp which is in my opinion a good exercise at the beginning to get the right size and position.

Your bridge carving still needs a lot of training. 

And last point is that the varnish looks a little uneven. Though, I like that you can see the grain structure of the spruce on the varnish surface. 

 

[Davide Sora]

3 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Old masters blackened the chamfers with charcoal before varnishing, which made corrections still possible by carving fractions of the line away.

What makes you think they did that? In my opinion, such an operation has a very high risk of dirtying the pores and fibers of the wood, with no possibility of remedying it. Have you noticed some smearing of black outside the chamfers in some ancient scrolls to support your theory?

[David Burgess]

On 1/12/2023 at 1:19 PM, David Burgess said:

Nice job Nestor.. better in my opinion than the work of some people who have been making for a long time.

If I were to make a first suggestion stylistically, it would be to shorten the upper corners to better match the lower corners.

 

On 2/5/2023 at 2:26 PM, Torbjörn Zethelius said:

Funny, I was thinking of making the lower corners larger to match the upper corners. The 'problem' with the upper corners is that they look a bit too fat IMO.

That would work too. I was looking at it from the perspective of the corners having reduced interference with the player, while still working stylistically.

[Torbjörn Zethelius]

5 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

 

That would work too. I was looking at it from the perspective of the corners having reduced interference with the player, while still working stylistically.

You're probably right. To my taste short corners look like sheet. But that's just me.

[Andrew Victor]

As a player I have to assert that David is absolutely correct about the upper corners. A slight angling of the bow while bowing near the fingerboard and you can get all tied up (literally - and break hairs too). I have one viola that has given me something of that problem.

Live and learn!

[Andreas Preuss]

4 hours ago, Davide Sora said:

What makes you think they did that? In my opinion, such an operation has a very high risk of dirtying the pores and fibers of the wood, with no possibility of remedying it. Have you noticed some smearing of black outside the chamfers in some ancient scrolls to support your theory?

It’s apparently under the varnish. 
 

Besides that, i tried it myself and it was the first time I a kind of understood the aesthetic principle behind the idea. When you blacken the chamfer of the scroll just before the last and final corrections you can see VERY clearly the flow of line, high-lightened through the black and white contrast.

On the other hand, if you try to apply the black line after varnishing it’s always very difficult and can be, in the worst case, very messy. Marchetti is a good example. 

[Davide Sora]

17 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

On the other hand, if you try to apply the black line after varnishing it’s always very difficult and can be, in the worst case, very messy. Marchetti is a good example. 

That's why Stradivari did it so well, to underline his technical supremacy over the other luthiers of the time. Relative accuracy has always been important in violin making.

There doesn't seem to be any traces of black ink in the wood of his scrolls.