almost there...

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the piano is my favorite instrument

i lied...

i need to make more of these scrubs

i'll be back
________________

losing track of time

so what month is this again?

bassist Andy Irvine stoppped by the store the other day to talk about bass playing. cool guy, no super star attitude.just a super talented musician passionate about his bass. Jack the guitarist was pretty awesome too, he does a heck of a job here on his  tele. Stan was told to stand in for the missing drummer literately right before the bass clinic started. he obviously had no problem laying down tight beats for a hot groove. 

and we keep going and going and going... no where...

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i'll be back

nice!

outopi taste so good...

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every so often, i get to borrow a nice viola from someone for a while! in this way, i've tried 5 different violas made by the legendary Marilyn Wallin. i admire her free hand at crafting awesome sounding violas. every instrument reminds you of the others, but is always unique.all 5 were slightly different models but all shared the gentle slopping shoulders. one had an edge that looked like the thick crust of a pie and another had the gentlest recurve. you never know what you're getting, but its always exciting coz they are all so frightfully delicious . i got to borrow this one for the weekend!

please excuse me, i have to go play it for a few hours now!

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i still think cats are cold and mean even though.
 
that's where i'm at.

scrub scrub

Alex (1976 – September 6, 2007)

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a small scrub i made from left overs, its been very helpful this last year:

took a few hours to make and there are some obvious errors that anyone who has made a plane would know about. but it is usable as is and i need to make a few more in different sizes because i can't afford to buy them!

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makes me sad whenever i hear it. HEY! wait a minute! the caption is displaying the wrong info! this is the one in D not G...

i'll be back

VSO #?

 

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ok, VSO #5 needs to take back seat for a while.

i need to make 3 violas in a hurry.

here are preliminaries of 2:

the back of one is drawn onto a plank of 3/4" thick maple i bought on eBay.
i suppose this is maybe going to become VSO #5 or 6.

here's the other sister VSO. both will be built on the same pattern.

necks are going to be made from these blocks i have floating around.

hmmm... here's some scrap maple. i think there's enough material here for 20 to 30 bridges.

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HOT TIME folks. Dateh on 5 string, Yoon and Belcher on guitar.

i'll be back.

VSO#5 ep.14

i had a few hours to work on the neck this afternoon.

here's the other side:

i'm getting closer. working without guide lines can be fun. the symmetry is a little off, but its too minor for me to worry about. i kinda like it that way to be honest. a sterilized scroll can be boring.

 

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giving Blu Cantrell (awesome vocals by any standard) a run for her cash... Rhiannon Giddens *killed* this cover. OWNED. opera training sure came in handy...

i'll be back.  

VSO#5 ep. 13

making a fiddle requires different skill sets at various stages. for the head, you have to be more wood carver, for the neck, you need to be more fiddler. the head is the most insignificant part of the instrument. but like in life, the least important thing happens to demand the most attention. you could lop the head off a fiddle and it wouldn't sound any different, but it would look darn funny coz everyone is expecting to see a familiar scroll there.

many players tend to like interesting and different treatment of the head. many makers like to stick to the same boring thing. i can't tell what i really like more, the traditional scroll, or anything but the traditional scroll. but check it out: its not a new thing, since Gaspar da Salo, fiddle makers have been adorning their instruments with carved heads like the gambas of the renaissance. other ethnic and folk instruments of many other cultures beyond Western civilization, some of which have changed little in a few hundred years are decorated by the makers fancy. i've done 2 traditional scrolls already, i'm not very good at it, and should carve more for practice, but they bore me, to be honest.   

here you see i've cut out the suggested outline of the neck:

next i draw in some other lines. the thing is, i never learned how to use templates like a real maker, so i draw free hand what i want to carve directly onto the maple block and i cut, check, draw some more and cut again:

first cut is the deepest:

as the lines get cut off, i begin to rely on imagination:

and it just gets uglier:

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i'll be back...

VSO#5 ep. 12

lol

the ribs are too tall. the sound is nice but weak. so i'll take a couple of mm's off to see if it'll be any better.

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should have gone to film school. 5 stars for awesomeness!

...

VSO#5 ep. 11

the sound box has been assembled temporarily. i also made a really grotesque neck reject complete with a fingerboard made of pine from discarded shipping pallets. i will post the monstrosity as soon as glue dries....for now, my neck pattern looks like this:

i'm expecting living expenses to go up dramatically this summer. i'm gearing up for the worst. this fiddle making hobby is awfully expensive and i may have to stop for a while, while i regroup and try to make more money. oh well, what'cha gonna do about it? at least i still have a roof over my head and food to eat.

 maybe i'll blog about something else for a while.

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when feeling awful blue, play some Bechet, it helps. 
.....

VSO #5 ep. 10

the woods i ordered arrived. but i don't like the color of orange wood and padauk is too rough grained for pegs. the cherry is ... not my favorite. i want to keep the woods but i will have to find other woods for the fittings i want to make. 

the ribs went on the other day. the next step is to glue in the lower linings and close the sound box temporarily and glue on a makeshift neck for a experimental set-up. i'll be able to figure out if i like the sound and change the rib height if i think its too high. 

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awesome

...

VSO#5 ep. 9

as it stands to date:

the sides are all bent and "ready". well... we'll see...

i have a love/hate relationship with hide glue. but i guess its like being married. sooner or later, can't live with her, can't eradicate her (lawfully). ~sigh...

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those bow arms! those fingers!  Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy on TED

to be continued

a little distraction

i'm losing motivation with VSO #5

thus i'm playing with this repair while i regroup.

i have a fiddle with a missing corner and it looked like this:

i cleaned it up and grafted some new wood on it. fairly straight forward repair:

i wish i could have hidden it better, but i wasn't trying very hard...

the back had an area that was all scratched up and, missing varnish. varnish repair is one of my many weak areas, so i experiment with varnish repair whenever i get a chance:

i dislike spirit varnish because it is easy to damage. but what the heck, i'm not waiting to win any restoration prizes...

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try doing that!

to be continued

VSO#5 ep. 8

and we're crawling... crawling ... crawling...

 

the blocks went on a couple of days ago. normally i hate corner blocks and prefer cutting corners, but some insanity came upon me and i glued on a few corner blocks.  

a few thoughts also came thru' about the pegs i want to put on this VSO. thinking about using Argentinian osage orange wood or maybe paduak... can't make up my mind... i guess it all depends on how dark the finish is going to be eventually.    

 

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sublime...

to be continued...

my old fiddle

my old high school fiddle has seen better days.

it is in disrepair. i haven't really played it since going to flute school. sometime this year, i would really like to fix her up nicely.

 

how's that for a short fingerboard? 

the fingerboard is worn out and there are random flat spots. for years when i was a kid, i could not figure out why my fiddle buzzed so much. i thought there was a crack somewhere, and it drove me nuts! i also had a really bad bow and i was dumb enough so that i didn't know a bad bow could set you back a few years. 

anyway, the fingerboard is badly glued to the neck. there is a 3/4 mm gap between the neck and fingerboard from nut to shoulder on the bass side. the neck was starting to bend underneath the fingerboard from the pull of strings.

 you can pretty much see from all that fuzz that the strings were buzzing the fingerboard pretty bad, the A string in particular was torture. i think its time for a new fingerboard.  

  

 

there is a shoulder crack on the bass side that runs several cms. ditto on the treble side:

here's a shot of the long crack that runs from the upper eye of the treble  sound hole all the way down to the saddle. i have no clue what it's going to look like underneath and didn't think to peep inside while shooting these pictures. but either way, the top will have to come off for a number of repairs. 

there is a wing crack on the bass side.

on the back, the center seam is open from button down several cms.

the same at the lower back:

the lower bout ribs on the treble side have some serious looking cracks...

i intend to do full repairs on my fiddle and make it sound better than it ever did.

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Ensemble Ditto, encore. Seoul Arts Center. South Korea, 2008.

to be continued

VSO #5 ep.7

"graduating" the back is done with the help of my marking caliper. which has a resolution of + 1mm. so depending on how much coffee i had to drink today, the back is either 2 or 4mm thick. 

 

getting closer....

i never said i was precise.....

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violist Ken Hamao, performing Wieniawski. accompanied by James Lent.

eh... wow?

to be continued...

VSO #7 ep. 2

VSO #7 is going to have to wait until i get my rotary tool thing fixed. but this is where i'm at now:

 

my pattern is drawn onto the plank and a quick trip to the band saw produced:

 

on we go....

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6. count them. 6!
to be continued