After the workshop, after Weiser, back to reality...

Finally catching up on sleep after 3 weeks of long, but good, hours.

The Southern California Violin Makers Workshop was terrific, as usual. I spent 2 weeks there, at the campus of Pomona College in Claremont, California. Basically a fantasy world for violin makers. One of the high points for me was that I was able to play a 1714 Stradivari violin and a 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin, one after the other. Of the two, the Strad was my favorite. I generally hate my tone on the e-string, but on this Strad, I liked it. People use the word 'silvery' or 'shimmering' to describe these Strad e-strings, and it always sounded a bit overblown to me. I was wrong. There really is something there, hard to describe.

In addition to those two, one of the bow-maker students brought his 1733 Bergonzi violin, another classic Cremonese instrument. He has owned it for 61 years, and according Michael Darnton, it was in amazing shape. Lots of varnish, excellent edges, well-tended after.

But the most important part of the workshop is that many of us have become good friends. We share a common interest, and enjoy learning from each other. Michael Darnton is an excellent teacher, with a tremendous amount of knowledge. I spent most of the time experimenting with edgework, though I did get my two plates in fairly decent shape by the end. You can compare these to their state in my previous post, "pre-workshop rush!"

It's hard to pick among the photos I took, but if you want to see more, please go to my flickr set here The grounds of the campus are beautiful as well.

After two weeks at the workshop, I flew home, loaded up the shop, and took it up to the National Old-time Fiddlers' Contest in Weiser, Idaho. Again as usual, Phil (my bow-maker friend) and I had a great time with wonderful folks. Plenty of good fiddlers played my two fiddles, making them sound pretty, and giving me good feedback. I hope to have several more to offer at next year's contest.

Now, back to work.

pre-workshop rush!

An end-of-the-day shot. I'm frantically trying to get stuff in shape for the workshop, which starts Monday. Leveling up the rib garland. Adding wings to the block of maple that will be the neck, pegbox, and scroll -- they're just to be able to get it to a square shape and will eventually be cut away. My front and back, I'm planing across grain to flatten. The back is co-operating, but the top has a bit of a twist to it. I have a short block plane and a long joiner plane -- really need to get a decent mid-sized plane for this particular job.

I also need to organize some of my tools, so I can ship some tomorrow to the workshop, those that I won't need for a couple days. They will probably arrive mid-week.

In additon, I have someone coming by tonight to drop off a bow that needs to be rehaired by tomorrow noon. Contest going on that day, and they noticed that the hair was a bit thin.

Neck on the Medieval Fiddle

I got the neck set last week, and had hoped to use an old cello fingerboard -- but it didn't have thick enough wood to do what I wanted. Also, I'm leaving for the violinmaker's workshop on Sunday, and so this will have to be it for the Medieval fiddle until after the Weiser fiddle contest. I had hoped to be able to mess about with it there. Oh well.

Party damage

A fiddle belonging to one of our band-member's son. He's just graduated from high school, they were having a graduation party at their home. The son, who had been playing his fiddle -- a great jam session, I'm sure -- put his fiddle on his bed for a moment. A friend, not seeing the fiddle, plopped down on the bed, broke the fingerboard, cracked the top, popped the neck out.



Here's the neck mortise and neck. It is an older fiddle that has been repaired probably several times over its life. You can note one of the top cracks running from the neck mortise down towards the bridge area. It's a light line you see startig about 1/3 in from the left side of the mortise.



A side view of the neck after the fingerboard stub has been removed. Note the multiple bushings and re-drilling of pegholes in the pegbox.



I'm holding the neck in the mortise. Note the missing wood at the end of the button, also notice the fill (some sort of putty) where the button meets the edge. There's also a strange scribe line down the edge of the heel, just a bit out from the rib.* This neck root has a slab of wood added to the inside edge, to extend it out a bit, as well as the shim at the bottom that shows here. (* On later cleaning of old glue and debris, it turns out that these 'scribe lines' are actually the edge of a shim that has been added to each side of the neck. )



Using a palette knife to hold open the break in the neck block. This is actually an old break that had been glued back together. Time for a new block.



Out comes the block. Note the old repair label. I don't use them, myself. I will pencil in the year on some repairs, more for a way to monitor how something works over time. When I first started, the fellow who was directing me thought repair labels were a good idea, that one should do it, as a way of documenting what's happened to the fiddle. And I do admit they're interesting to see. But right now, they seem like grafitti to me -- not to mention you get blamed for all the bad repairs that might take place after it leaves your shop!



After removing old wood and putty, I fit a new piece of maple to the button.



The new wood applied to the button damage; the edge is still a bit proud to be later fit to the installed neck-heel. Oddly, this plate has been previously chiseled out, perhaps to seat the neck -- very unusual. You can see the step-up edge just inside the rib line. One would like to keep the plate full thickness here, as it is a weak spot.

Joining the top & back on the Strad-pattern violin

Aged spruce, cut down the center, but not yet split apart. Looks like a piece of firewood. And if things don't go right, it still could be!



Here's the two pieces of the top, now split. The process is to make perfectly square edges at the joint, using a long, sharp plane.



The top glued together. Here I used a rub joint -- heat the wood with a hair-dryer, apply the warm hide-glue, then rub the joint together until it 'catches'. Clamping on one end to avoid creating any tension. My geraniums, in the background, really want to be outside. I hope it warms up soon.



Joining the back is basically the same process. My jointer plane is partly hidden behind it here.



Here's the back, glued together. A rub-joint, as with the top, then held in clamps. I tried to line up the flame by planing away a bit of the joint prior to gluing, then doing an eyeball match. It's tough, because the flame is not consistently vertical, so it may not match up at the height of the arching anyway. I don't worry about it too much.

Medieval fiddle, making the neck & pegbox.

Laying out the lines for the neck on this chunk of local maple. It's about 3-1/2 inches square in the cross-section, a little narrower than the plans call for. It's all approximate!



I cut the neck to rough shape on the table saw and my small, bench-top bandsaw (for the curvy parts!).



After a fair amount of gouge and rasp work, the basic shape of the neck is starting to show.

Ribs bent and installed

The ribs bent and installed on the form. I still need to add internal linings both top and bottom, then trim everything for height -- for example, you can see a the close c-bout rib rising above the left corner block -- but the basic shape is there.