A little reflection

Today was a nice day. Not weather wise, shoveled 3" off the driveway in the morning so we could go to my uncles memorial. That part was nice. It is strange how the only time you see most of your relatives is when there is a funeral. Although I guess most of the times I saw my cousins and aunts and uncles was on holidays at Grandma's house. At least those came more often than the funerals! It was nice to catch up a little with everyone, though the time went too fast. When I woke up this morning instead of reading I wrote down a song, it has a melody and everything, if I can still remember it. I'll have to put it on my MP3 player. Here it is in verse, 2 verses, a chorus, 1 verse repeated, then the chorus again with more gusto:



What do you say when a loved one has died
after the crying and tears?
Everyone knows they await the same fate
no wonder they tremble in fear.

But God gave his son to die for our sins
so we can work by his side.
The world will try to take you away
but we are the masters bride

So let go of your fear
fill up your heart with His love.
Feel His presence is near
your strength really comes from above.

God gave his son to die for our sins
so we can walk by his side.
The world will try to lead you astray
but we are the masters bride

So let go of your fear
fill up your heart with His love.
Feel His presence is near
your strength really comes from above.

Good-by Frank.

Bass bar geometry

No no, geometry isn't boring! Let's make this painless. An article on bass bars I read that was written by Joseph Curtin had an engineer point out to him that the perfect shape for a bass bar would be a triangle. That would give the most resistance with the least weight. Let's assume the bass bar is 15mm tall (this one is as a matter of fact, counting the belly thickness), and goes from the upper to lower block (I don't think any respectable bass bar does), and the thickest point is in the middle. If you draw it up it would be like the triangle in blue ink in the drawing. What I use to get the heights of the bass bar is linear regression. If I set the height at 15 the point 1/4 of the way to the end of that is 15/1.11 or 13.5. 13.5/1.23 is the next step, 11/1.37 is the next step and 8/1.52 is the last step at the end. This measurement is the total bar height and includes the thickness of the belly. Subtracting the belly thickness gives the curve in red. You can see through 1/2 of the length the line is just slightly below the triangle line, then it fades some in the middle because of subtracting the belly thickness. It makes a triangle with a rounded point, if there was such a thing. The resulting bass bar is the line in green. The middle of the bar on the bottom is fairly flat with a rounded hump above it. The ends on the top are fairly flat(neglecting the last 15mm or so) over an arched bottom. So the rather complex looking curve has fairly simple geometry underlaying it. Cool.
Much like that everything in our lives has God underlaying it. Love, pain, trials, fun...everything. The seemingly complex interactions between people, and countries and everything around may seem chaotic to us, but doesn't phase God. If everyone treated everyone else the way they would like to be treated things would be much better. But as long as hatred and greed and all the other vices are the rule and not the exception chaos is all we can expect. Trust in God to help you through anything you go through. And thank Him as well, for the good and the bad.

Fitting the bass bar

I have the belly somewhat tuned in now and I would normally cut the f holes now. I noticed in the Keith Hill area tuning page he puts the bass bar in BEFORE the f holes. I emailed and asked him about this and he responded that is was easier and less complicated that way for him. I decided to give it a try and see for myself. It's not like I always follow the rules anyway. I always rough in the bass bar before I glue on the studs. I've read on maestronet Oded Kishony's idea of locating the bar on the ends. Sounds like a great idea, so I did it that way.
I rough fit my bar, and then cut the extra bar length into 2 pieces to work as the locator's. I cut notches in them and deepened them until the bass bar just squeezed in between them when they are up against the end blocks. A couple of scrap pieces of wood were glued on the the locator blocks and the end blocks to hold the entire thing together. After the glue dries I'll pull the bar out, hopefully without breaking the glue bond since it is pretty tight, and take a little off the ends so it will actually slide in and out easily, but not be sloppy. When it's all done and glued up I can just pop off the glued on pieces and don't have any chunks of wood to carve off the belly. It also should be easier to fit the bar...I always have trouble getting chalk in between the studs!
I read in "Streams in the Desert" today a nice anonymous poem about being called aside. It's about the little breaks in our lives, that we may think of as being annoying, aggravating or just frustrating. How we handle those times is important. The traffic jam, the illness, the rut, the obligations, the tug of a child or spouse.
These breaks may be more critical than all the "important" stuff were rushing along to complete. Give them the time and consideration they deserve. It will be well spent. The traffic jam? Imagine Jesus sitting beside you. Are the guys in front of you really morons?

More tuning and a fixture

I pulled the back off my tuning fixture and checked out the free plate modes. No it's not blasphemy to my tuning philosophy. I'm just trying to figure out how stiff the plate are supposed to be. As a self taught maker I don't have a teacher to tell me when the plate is too stiff, or when it is too flimsy. According to the generally accepted method of measuring plate stiffness, avg. of mode 2 and mode5 squared, times the weight, my back is right in the ballpark now. It feels much stiffer than any other back I've made. My teacher didn't stop me soon enough before! We'll see what kind of difference this makes.

I made up the board I plan to use as a tuning fixture, a bass bar gluing fixture, and a neck alignment/set up fixture. It has a centerline drawn on it for lining up the neck, from the heel to the scroll. The neck inside view can be set using the top of the board as a reference. The step is easily measured off the belly, the nut position should end up even with the bottom on the belly plate, and the eye of the scroll should be even with the top of the board. Now that I said this, I hope I'm right!

Roughing the recurve in

After the purfling is in I start putting the recurve in. Carving a violin from the inside out gives you the correct long arch and a little less than half of the cross arches are correct. Some of the recurve can be done by eye...you know the big flat on the bottom can't be there and the bouts have to be lowered. But once it gets somewhat to size how do you get it the rest of the way? I use area tuning. I mentioned it before. If you're not up on it check out Keith Hill's website: http://www.instrumentmaking.keithhillharpsichords.com/areatuninghints.html

I tap the instrument with a dowel or pencil while damping the plates with something. At this point I'm really listening for the fundamental tone, I want it even through the whole plate. Not surprisingly the edges of the violin sound higher. I keep removing wood, a little at a time, and keep checking to see where the highest tones are. Those are the only spots I carve. With my set up I have the option of taking wood from the outside or the inside. I look at where I have to take the wood off and decide which side seems to need to go down. Some things to keep in mind. Curved areas will be higher in pitch, areas near an edge will be higher, and thicker areas will be higher. The point I'm at now is not quite even in pitch yet, but a lot better than it was. The area of the lower wing is still very high, but I'm going to leave it there for now. That's one area I don't want to be wimpy. I made my board up for assembling the neck, and tuning, and gluing the bass bar. I'll glue the belly and rib assembly on over the next couple of days (I'm off work!).

Purfling is in

I just got done gluing the purfling. I don't think it came out too bad. One spot on the photo where it looks wiggly is just where it is pushed over when I pushed it into the groove, and the groove was a little shallow there. Should remember to check the depth all along the whole length. I just noticed the outline looks a little lopsided! Oh well, I'm in good company. I've only seen one instrument that was almost perfectly symmetrical...at least looking at old instruments. Maybe the new "perfection" ethic of violin making has made the quest for symmetry and perfect corners, bee-stings and f-holes like a holy grail. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against makers trying to make a perfect instrument. Not at all. Heh, if I could do it I'd try too! I'm more interested in making one that sounds great, and looks good enough where someone might actually want to play it.
I just turned it over and looked at the belly. It looks much more symmetrical. Then I remembered. The back had an area at the top that was cut close to the planned outline, not 3-5mm outside the line. When I glued the ribs on I had to squeeze the c'bouts in some to get the belly to have some overhang, and in the process lost some of the overhang on the back at the top. I figured the c-bouts were more important. So it was self inflicted wound. That wouldn't be the first either. We try for perfection, and never reach it. The things we try for are the usually the things other people admire. Many of our failings are self inflicted. Sometimes we get the chance to do things over and over and can improve with time. But sometimes we have other things we have to do, with no experience and we have to learn again. When dealing with things we haven't done before, and no time to learn, the only thing we can do is pray and trust God. If you're going out where you haven't gone before take Jesus with you. Don't go it alone.