Inevitable

Inevitable. That's the only thing I can say. You hear stories about it. People who cut the button off on the back right from the get go. Makers who fit and glue the bass bar on the wrong side (at least that's easily fixable). Apprentices (sure, it's ALWAYS the apprentice) who, while using a drill press to mark a safe depth to hog out the inside, drill a hole, or several all the way through! I'm glad I can't do that. I do the inside first. But I got the brilliant idea, especially since now I have a drill press where I didn't before, to do the drill press idea on the outside. Set the drill about 5mm up from a raised stop, and mark a safe height to hog the od to. It works fantastic, bang, zoom, and you're done.

I must be an apprentice. The drill press is not an expensive one, you could call it cheap, but it isn't really too cheap, but the locking mechanism for the stop isn't as solid as say a Bridgeport mill, something I have a lot of experience on. (notice the hemming and hawing and blame fixing on an inanimate object) I whacked several holes through before I noticed. Luckily it was only on one side. Unluckily I have to make another side, rough it out to match, and glue them together.

I was going along pretty fast. Doing the inside doesn't take more than an hour or so. At this point I'm just roughing it in. I still need to finish it up when I cut the outside profile in. I just like to have it about 4-5mm thick everywhere when I mark the profile on. Then I can set the edge height, cut the purfling grooves and install the purfling. Then I'm on to finishing everything up, and tuning.

I had one more chunk of spruce under the bench. I always have more back wood than spruce. I'll have to buy a bunch when I settle on what I'm using. This Sitka I bought from Bruce Harvey, at Orcas Island Tonewoods http://www.radiofreeolga.com/tonewoods/ was thick enough I figured if I cut it just right, I could get 3 halves out of it. But have you ever tried to cut a belly, or worse a back of a viola blank "JUST RIGHT" with a hand saw? Never quite comes out JUST RIGHT. I had one option, split it. The other piece seemed to be perfectly split, with no runout in either direction, so I had my hopes up. It split perfectly, right where I wanted it to. The new side matches the other side quite nicely, and has the same cool cross lines (what are those called?) and a bit of bear claw in the upper bout. Splitting it again I should be able to carve a 21-22mm (it measures 46mm at the thick end) high viola out of it. That would be a high one.

I now have a chance to see (hear?) how the halves sound before gluing them together. By the end of the week I should have them ready to glue together. I have to start working on roughing out the back. I have some big leaf maple from Bruce, and I've never tried big leaf before. I heard it is hard to bend. Is that true?

Well at least now I have the "inevitable" out of my system. I don't need anymore of them, regardless of what the word means.