V1 - the tale, Odd coments as I make my first violin Options

[edi malinaric]

Hi All, It's been over 2 months since I had anything to show for my efforts at Brian Lisus' violinmaking school. Not too surprising as the school was closed for a week or so. Then we had a cousin and his wife come over on holiday from Croatia and for 4 weeks I had to play full-time translator and chauffeur.

OK - so last week we returned. Greeted all and sundry and began unpacking my tools and violin bits.

Brian asks if I could look at the rheostat that acts as the speed controller for his router. I opened it up and found that the windings had shorted in three places. Cleaned the wire at the position of the break and placed a blob of solder over the breaks. Scraped everything down so that the slider didn't hang up, closed the box and watched as Brian nervously tried it out. (I'm not stupid!) Luckily it seemed to operate as well as before. However I suspect that it's only a temporary fix.

Anyway I managed to get in an hour of work on the violin - finished working the edges down to the line and then measured and marked out the referencepoints for the rough arching.

Last night I was ontending to begin gouging away the excess wood...

What made me consider the marriage of Brian's spare digital vernier and the drill press I'm not sure.

Anyway I gave up on the violin and looked at things mechanical.

Removed the brackets that had held a dial gauge to the drill press and and returned home with the vernier and the brackets. A couple of hours on the milling machine and I had made a pair of brackets that I still have to brazeto the brackets and that will allow the quick attachment of the vernier to the body of the drill press and the quill.

Just bring the point of the drill down until it touches the table, zero the vernier and "Hey Presto" a direct reading depth gauge. Just perfect for drilling the reference depth holes down to thickness. No more fiddling with the dial gauge measuring thing, re-establishing the exact point to measure and writing down how much further to go.

Now you can make your mistake in one quick and easy step!

If you look carefully down the centreline you might make out the dimples left by the drill. Certainly it made roughing out very much quicker and easier - about 80 minutes (with a tea break) to bring the surface to within 1.2mm of the final dimensions.



cheers edi