Chips!

I've finally made some wood chips! I made some the other day when I was putting the taper on the pegs for the Titan the other day. I need to make another peg and a button to replace the geg I twisted and the button I forgot to make. So I decided when I do that I'll make up the pegs for this violin at the same time. Like I said before, I make all the fiitings, fingerboard too, out of the same chunk of wood. A 2" x 2" x 12" piece is big enough to do a violin. You need a piece slightly longer than a foot long to do a viola.

Before I make the pegs I have to rough out a fingerboard, and taipiece. The fingerboard is easy. Cut it out as a tapered rectangle, plane it square, round the top out, and put a scoop on the bottom. Minus the scoop, and with about 10 more minutes on the radius to get rid of flat spots and you have about an hour into it. The Yucatan rosewoood I'm using on this one made a fingerboard that right now, without the relief on the bottom, sounds a fifth higher than the ebony one next to it.

The plane blade is ground to a 42mm radius, and fits in the body that is under the fingerboard. I had to chisel out some more clearance for chips in the body. It works much better now. After I plane it with the long plane with the corrogated face underneath everything (my most useful plane, stays sharp and is rock solid, I made a chipbreaker for it that is 5.6mm thick), I run the radius plane on it to be sure the radius is right. When I get close, I just use the plane blade as a scraper, still sliding it on the long plane to keep it flat. If you use your plane this way, watch your fingers, you could slice them up. I've managed to avoid that, it's saws that get me.

I also cut out the pattern for the violin. I found a nice new "tool", spray adhesive. If you've ever tried to glue paper on to wood, you know how hard it is to get it smooth. The spray adhesive worked great. Glued on flat in seconds, and I started sawing right away. I saw it out leaving the line, and then file it until the line is all but gone. I've found it better to use my magnifying glasses on things like that. My progressives work great, but they just don't see up close like I used to. The magnifying visor works wonders. When I don't use them my work is no where's near the same quality.

So another 1/2 hour on planning, and finally an hour on the actual instrument.