Fiddle Number One

Purfling got significantly less annoying when I finally broke the bending iron back out. You can heat the stuff up too much or it delaminates, but just enough and it doesn’t break. One more C bout to make and then it’s time to glue it.

I managed to do two corners this morning, so just one left and the purfling channel is done. Woot! The third one was the best so far.

Using the gouge to make the curve has a less obvious benefit I hadn’t thought of: it makes all the curves in the corners the same. If all goes well, I should finish up the final corner tomorrow and start putting in the purfling.

#4 was not as nice as #3, but it does have the advantage of being actually on the fiddle. The miter joint should fit better when I do it for real.

Purfling went much quicker than I thought it would. Once you get into a rhythm, it’s not terrible. That’s the first corner I did, so I have three more to do. The rest is finished. Here’s a shot of a test strip in the bottom channel.

It’s pretty but it ain’t a fiddle is it:

I did however make it (the patio, not the smoker, though I made what was in that too). And making that patio meant I got no work done last weekend in the shop. But yesterday I finally broke my streak of shopless days

Continue reading “The post wherein I describe the recommencement of fiddle making”

I need to not turn this into a habit: basically got no time in the shop this weekend. I did manage to glue and trim the rest of the clamp pieces:

Then, yesterday, I was at an estate sale and ran across this guy:

It’s a C/G concertina made by Stagi in Italy. I got it for $10 (they sell for several hundred) because it wouldn’t make any sound despite the fact that the bellows moved fine. 10 minutes of inspection at home revealed the problem: it was probably left in a hot place at some point and all the valves were glued shut. An hour of work later, it was playing fine. It has quite a nice voice.

Okay, okay, I am going to go back to making the violin.

I made two more corners this morning and had something of a breakthrough with the second one (#3 overall). If you’re a new luthier reading this, I list the steps that worked for me below.

Continue reading “More corners”

That’s my first attempt at purfling a corner, and I am proud of it. It’s far from perfect, but I think it’s a pretty good start. I am returning the purfling marker that I bought (it’s not made very well) and it’ll be a few days before a replacement arrives, so I have a few days to practice making more of these.

I’ll never see the corner purfling of a violin again without judging it. If you ask an average person, maybe even someone who plays the violin, to describe the top of the instrument they probably won’t even mention the purfling. It’s the sort of feature that, if done right, is subtle. It’s also one of the places on the violin in which the makers style comes through. Compare these two, for example:
Continue reading “Sharpening perception”

If anything could keep me up at night worrying about making a fiddle, it’s the possibility that there is something I’ve already screwed up and just don’t know it yet. Yesterday, I got a bit more fuel for that sort of worry.

Continue reading “Disaster narrowly averted”

So with the rough arching done, the next step was to use files to get the edges of the top plate even and down to the final dimensions. I left the corners a bit unshaped as I’ll eventually use a knife to do the final shaping. I have looked at a whole bunch of violin corners (seriously like 100+) in the last few weeks with two results: 1. I am getting a better idea of what good corners should look like 2. I know the corners on the Maggini are not going to be good. But first one and all.

So edge mostly set, it was time to move on to making the platform.

Continue reading “Platforming”

Lots of stuff, so starting at the end and working back:

At this point, I just have a little work on the outline and then scraping before the arching is officially done. Super exciting. Here are some shots in reverse chronology leading up to that.

Continue reading “Weekend update and the biblical story goes awry”