Weekend update

Got a bunch of work done putting linings into both fiddles this weekend. This turned out to be more difficult than I imagined it would be but enjoyable as well.

I decided to use cedar for the linings, which made the shop smell great. Here’s a shot of setup I used to cut the linings down. I started with a board and ended up with 60cm long strips about 2mm thick and 8mm tall.

It took me a few iterations to come up with that setup to trim them, but it worked well once I’d figured it out.

So first I line Davide. Rubber bands added to clothes pins for added clamp pressure. That’s my new glue pot, which is actually a repurposed wax heater. Works great.

So the Davide lined, it’s now on to Golia.

On the full sized violin, linings are slightly more complex. For extra strength at the C-bouts, you cut slots in the blocks and anchor the linings in them like this:

The linings come up over the top and will be trimmed flush later. Here’s Golia all clamped up.

Note the two extra clamps. In both those spots I had an annoying bubble in the side. The nice thing about linings is that they allow you to correct some mistakes you might have made when bending. In fact, when I removed the clamps later, the sides were much improved.

So linings done, I began to work on the top for Davide. Here I’m tracing the outline of the sides using a small washer to establish the overhang.

And here’s the finished outline with the corners drawn in. They’re done by hand. Also, you can see what the linings look like flattened in this pic.

Some work on the bandsaw and the blank is ready to begin carving.

That block on the bottom will eventually become the top of the fiddle.

Now for some random gratuitous shop photos