Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

In a guitar site Christian Crevels builds a classical guitar and at the end uses an oil finish and it shows the direct simplicity of such an uncomplicated method . By the way it shows an excellent shooting board for joining the plates .Of course it would be too thin for planing in a vice .

[MikeCooper]

[John Cadd]

The maker has his site under his own name . But apart from nice pictures there is no real information about the oil finish . He also does French Polish on other instruments . Oh I forgot to say he makes guitars .

[MikeCooper]

Well John and Michael. I guess you two are the only ones still here besides me. So Merry Christmas to you both.

I have two weeks off from work so hopefully I will have time to make some progress on the violin!

[Michael Darnton]

Thanks. Happy holidays! I sort of watch numbers---I think there are more lurkers than just the two of us. 22,000 views--I know I don't account for 7000 of that.
_________________
new blog at my site! http://darntonviolins.com/blog
my work sites: http://darntonviolins.com and http://darntonhersh.com

[John Cadd]

Yes Happy Christmas. In England growing up there was a tradition from the BBC to have a few violin concerts mainly from Menuhin . Then some years ago they dropped that like a hot brick .Now musicians seem to be on trial and anouncers have to talk over them and tell us they are good . That was never necessary . But the New Years concert from Europe continues a fine tradition .You could sight read all the pieces they play .

[MikeCooper]

Well I made some progress of the Christmas holiday, I got the ribs glued to the back plate and flattened the surface of the spruce top plate and marked the outline on it.

I had a few gaps in the glue join, see where it has 'light' penciled in. so I had to insert some glue in places with a pallet knife.

[John Cadd]

I`m almost afraid to ask ,but what kind of glue are you using ?
How (or where) did you manage to have gaps?

[John Cadd]

I magnified the picture and managed to see the very faint pencil marks . They were invisible before . For those areas try the damping method on the glue . Tape some cotton wool up against the wood ,both sides , and wet the cotton wool with cold water . Cover with cling film and the glue will soften in a micro climate . When you come back after 4 hours take off the cotton wool and press the wood together with the clamps . Don`t try to open the joint. Just squeeze it closed .Do that straight away and leave any squeeze out till later .Don`t over tighten the join either . The glue will harden as per normal .For squeezout ---Use a small brush with boiling water .Dry that out with a clean cloth straight away for hardened glue. Give it a few hours . The squeezout glue will not be too solid by then .
For any beginners reading this for the first time (not yourself btw ) The way to use hot hide glue is to dry clamp everything first Then release the clams in a short area .Use a thin spatula to insert the glue and close the clamps. Move along to the the next section and repeat the process .
Fatal is to apply glue all around the open edges and try to fit it all together in one go . I don`t know how books describe that process .
You can use thin plastic instead of a metal spatula to avoid cooling the glue too fast . Or use two metal spatulas .One parked in the glue pot and change them over for the next section Then the warm metal makes the job easier .

[MikeCooper]

I used traditional hot hide glue. Yeah I tried to glue the whole rib garland in one go. That method worked on my last build but not on this one. This one glued to all the blocks well but then I had the gap shown by the pencil line and also not shown in this photo there was a big gap in the C bout rib on one side.

I was able to insert glue with a thin pallet knife and now it's glued solidly all the way around.

The spruce is planed perfectly flat. You can see the rib garland is not flat against it due to some slight flexibility in the ribs and back plate. That won't be a problem once the top plate is finished and glued on to the ribs.

I did the usual Cremonese taper from the top corner blocks to the neck block, tapering down just slghtly less than 2 mm. You can't see that in this photo since only the lower bout is visible here.

Once the top plate is finished, it will be flexible enough to make that slight bend down 2mm.

[MikeCooper]

I designed and built this 'cradle' to hold the spruce while planing it. It' half inch plywood with a stop block on the end and tapered wedge shaped sides to hold the plate steady while flatening the surface. On the other end there is a wedge to hold it in place. It would be nice if I had a tail vice on my bench, might make things like this easier. Maybe some day I'll make a new workbench and put a tail vise on it.

[John Cadd]

I looked back to page one at your inner mold which was a skinny one . My own molds were full thickness which helped with the final shape and depth of the ribs . So I would have to think through all that stage again .But please ignore what I suggested about squeezing the gaps closed .The glue on the end block would not allow pressure to remove the drying glue which would cause the gaps nearby.
Just half watching a surgeon removing a brain cancer with the hole in the skull about palm sized . So if you had the surgeons`s confidence would you be brave enough to reverse the garland gluing or press on regardless ? Just a little teaser for you .
Those separate clamps are not as useful as the ones in a group of three . A quick thread helps too . A fine thread requires too many turns . But speed is lless important than having the two parts in position before any glue arrives.
If you had used that awful cold hide glue the options are gone when it sets .

[MikeCooper]

yeah the rib form that I used is a copy of Stradivari's P form. 1/2 inch thick baltic birch plywood. I remove a couple thin layers from it, then applied the curly maple veneer... just for fun and because I like the look of curly maple.

I think Strad's forms are around 12mm thick.

These are cheap clamps from Harbor Freight. I glued cork to prevent slipping from the hard plastic. I would like better ones, maybe I'll make spool clamps for the next build. If there is a next build.

It's fun, I like building a violin, it's like meditation, very relaxing and in the zone kind of thing. I would like to build more but what would I do with them. I'm just a back woods guy with no customer base! lol

speaking of brain surgeons. I once saw a documentary that showed a brain surgeon doing a surgery. At one point a tiny bit of tissue went up a suction tube and he said, woops there go the piano lessons!