oh no what have i done?

self-explanatory:

(i.e. disaster unfolding)

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buttons buttons buttons

i like squidly things

 

and please prepare for zombies, now that the rapture has begun... wait, did it begin yet?

here's the viola race: 

24. The Viola Race from Cliphead on Vimeo.

the piano is my favorite instrument

i lied...

i need to make more of these scrubs

i'll be back
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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

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

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

and thus it was done

alright, enough of this fiddle. it has been returned to the owner with a stiff message about heat, humidity and hide glue. i hope i won't be seeing this fiddle anymore. 

 

  

 

  

it's time to work on that cello, but the case is kind of difficult to open though...

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instant fan. these guys are here: http://tabmusic.ca/

to be continued

on we go

it's taking up a lot of time.but on we go...

i've doubled the busted ribs. the broken linings had to go and i replaced the dubious looking bottom block. i know the name of the game here is conservation, but i couldn't resist. i'm leaving the ridiculous number of cleats the last guy left behind. there are too many and a waste of time to remove. i've also had enough doubling anything for 2010, except for sleep maybe...

$500 worth of effort on a $50 fiddle... even so, it was valuable experience. the next thing to do would be a crown repair and gluing the back onto the body. varnish touch-up ends the project, and then i can go back to the VSO making i miss so much.

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A Guarneri del Gesù  in the hands of Chang performing in the world's greatest concert venue ever. part of 2nd movt. and 3rd movt. featured. browse over to the 3rd movement for a brief shot of a mighty fine looking viola. 

to be continued...

double ribs please

been busy with this "repair" i decided to take on:

 

here's what it looked like inside:

i did this:

 

 

can't wait to finish VSO 5, which is several weeks behind schedule.

even more so with VSO 6 & 7. starting 2010 with a steep uphill climb :(

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to be continued...

gotta be kidding!!??

??!!

if you are on a long journey, and you are new, it's your job to slay at least a few dragons on the way... you are expected to! i came across the lizard in the picture above and feel like it's my destiny to piece it back together... kidding. no way!

so VSO#5 has grounded to a halt due to this thing called "life". how inconvenient.

 

this is where i'm at. the art of purfling inlay continues to elude me. i get nightmares thinking about purfling. i get nervous and usually postpone the operation at least twice before i actually do it. you see, i use a purfling router (1.27mm bit for the 1.3mm purfling) and jig that cuts so fast, a slip of the hand means all the work prior just went down the drain. i can do it by hand, but it takes me 6 times longer. missing in the picture is my dead luthier's foot pedal switch. it helps to ease the anxiety a little without having to fumble for the on/off switch after cutting. plus if i had a heart attacking and die while routing, at least the damage to the work will be mitigated somewhat... the Wecheer rotary i use will take all the bits and jigs made for the Dremel tool.

i use violin fiber purfling as opposed to wood purfling. i wanted to make violins one time and ordered a bunch dirt cheap from here, i remember they used to have stuff i could afford... so until my violin purfling gets used up, it's violin purfling on everything. with wood purfling, i can pound the sucker into the channel and later scrape clean for definition. i am reminded of the work of a violin maker whose violas i would kill for. Feng Jiang based in Ann Arbor, turns this turns into this .WOW.

wood purfling kept breaking on me until i discovered stupidly quite recently that it might work better if i bend them first. fiber installs right away and i can get away with murder. BUT i found out (the hard way) that if i pound fiber into the channel, the black outsides take on the shape of the walls of my badly cut channels. this mauls the line and definition of the purfling and makes it look like its about to throw up.

me and my router can't do corners so those are done by hand with a x'acto knife and channel tool. equal treatment for the back.

in short, purfling = hell

 

to be continued

VSO rambling etc

there's work 40hrs a week, and there are kids i have to torture i meant teach... hmmm.... there's only 24hrs a day... where do i find time to practice or make instruments? it's already 1am, i just got done with 3 lousy hours of viola practice and i'm here on the computer and i'll have to be at school by 8am to find a practice room to hide in until rehearsal with accompanist and class etc... and i won't get to see my VSO until late in the evening. ARRRGGGHHH.

so anyway, i thought i would bring on some pictures of old stuff and write a little bit about them.
here's VSO#2:

the whole point of VSO#2 was to see if i could learn wood carving in a hurry. this was my first attempt at carving a human head onto some awfully hard maple. the work of Susanne Küster formed the basis for my inspiration. this fiddle was also the first time i tried routing the purfling channel with a Dremel rotary tool. it was also the first time i tried overboard antiquing.

VSO#2 features a one piece back made of poplar i bought at Home Depot. the sitka top came from Bob Tibbetts as usual. the sides and purfling are from IVC. the maple for the neck and fingerboard i bought on eBay from someone... the accessories i bought from dov-music.com.

concept based loosely on Gasparo da Salò. really didn't quite work out as you can see from the pictures.
i posted it at maestronet.com (one of my favorite haunts in the past few years) and got a lot of very insightful and helpful comments. you can see it for yourself here.

my bridges tend to look like this:

VSO #3 is the viola i've been playing on since it's completion. i have a love-hate relationship with her.

i hear things i like about her and things i can't stand. but it's like having an ugly kid. you learn to love your ugly kid even if no one else will! VSO#3 is posted on maestronet here. "original" design.

and here's VSO#4. based loosely on an Amati bros.

 

as posted on maestronet here.

you can get an idea of what she sounds like at 2 in the morning here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpC69QFi3OA  pretend you didn't hear the mistakes please.

that's all for now