It's been a busy week since my return from Trinidad.  I unpacked my bag of tools only to find that the baggage handlers had done a real number on it; I am still in negotiations with United, hoping they will do right by me (I have been a good customer this year, with two trips to Trinidad and one to India). 

 I also somehow managed to drop my own cello bow -- no major damage here, just a broken tip plate.  My Red Wing teaching kicked in yesterday.  As lovely as it was to see my students, I have to remind myself to keep them up to speed, as the second semester is jam-packed with action.  Before the middle of May, they will have to thickness their plates, cut the ff-holes, fit and shape a bass bar, finish the interior of the rib structures, glue the sound box together, carve a scroll, make a fingerboard, shape and set the neck ... it can be done, but I might have to breathe down their necks heavily, which doesn't come naturally to me.

Meanwhile, I had my first Skype lesson with my Trinidadian students.  The magic of it reminded me of the first time I sent a fax, back in 1990 when I applied for the position with Sandra Wagstaff Violins.  In Beverley where I lived at the time, the only publicly accessible fax machine lived in a furniture store (by the same logic that you went to the pet shop to have your passport photos taken, and bought your eggs at the pub).  Standing among the humdrum collection of veneered beds and overstuffed sofas, I felt transported by the idea that as my resume ticked through the machine, it simultaneously appeared in someone's office, half a world away. It seemed nothing short of miraculous then, just as seeing my Trinidadian students in my home office is now.

  Just before I left for Trinidad, I finished the violin I made alongside my students last year.  I posted some pictures of it in the photo gallery, but here is one more:

The bane of my existence these days is a viola.  It arrived quite innocently a few days ago, and I felt instant pity -- for the child playing it as well as for the viola itself.  It is large, it is red, it is ugly.  The fingerboard had deep grooves worn into it.  The pegs looked like they had been gnawed by rats.  One of them was clearly splintering and had been inexpertly repaired with epoxy.  The bridge also had the look of having been designed and crafted by rats. Nothing on it worked.
  I started work on the pegs, and only a few minutes into this I realized that a) I wasn't going to be able to refit the pegs it came with in a satisfactory manner, b) I didn't have another set of pegs big enough and c) I had not brought any peg bushing materials.  I felt quite strongly that I couldn't possibly hand the viola back in its now unplayable state -- what to do?
  It was then Anna remembered some dowels lying about the room she is staying in.  We fetched the dowels, and I received the first set of blisters shaping them into peg bushings.

It was a little clumsy working like this ... the other problem was the fingerboard.  Once I had planed the grooves out, it was bright white maple, and pretty soft at that.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  It might not always be easy to come up with suitable paints or stains, but you can count on the universal female wish to be pretty.  We purchased a bottle of black nail polish and I set to work.

The worst part was the smell!
  When I was touching up the peg bushings, mosquitoes (who seemed to be attracted to the smell of the alcohol in the varnish) would land on my hands.  I'd shoo them away, they'd come back and sit on my face, or neck.  I'd put down Big Red and the varnish brush and wait patiently for them to land again, so I could smack them.  They'd disappear.  I'd pick up the viola and brush again, only to find the varnish had dried out in my palette and the mosquitoes were back in force. 
  The soundpost had fallen over, but unfortunately, some helpful person (or maybe another rat) had glued the endpin in place, so I can only hope I set it back up somewhat straight.
  When I tried to put the setup back on, it turned out the ugly bridge is now too low.  The only other viola bridge I have is used and there isn't enough foot on it to fit it to the arching. I am still trying to work out a solution (make a bridge from scratch??).  
  I received the second set of blisters cutting the pegs to size.
  When we took off a couple of hours (the first time off all week) to go to the beach, we were caught in a tropical downpour.  I gave up the day as a bad job and took a long nap.
 Tomorrow we start teaching, but I guess I will have to find time for Big Red somewhere in there.  (Shim the bridge, maybe?)
  

Strange things happen in the tropics.  When I was working on straightening a bass bridge (lots of bridges seem to warp here, worse than in other places, although this might be due to a prolonged lack of attention), whitish foam bloomed all along its edges.  Is it contagious, I wondered?  So far, the only ill effect of our being here is the profusion of bites.  We no longer look like we have the measles.  We look as though we have the measles as well as the chicken pox, supplemented with a generous dash of poison ivy.

Still, we are getting a lot of work done -- in addition to the bass, I have worked on ten or so violins.  Most of them just needed setup work, although a lot of them suffer from what we used to call "Hong Kong neck" (I suppose that would be "Trini neck" here) -- a lowering of the neck angle due to the extreme humidity.  Since our generous donors at Metropolitan Music just sent us a neck clamp, I thought I'd inaugurate it by performing  a "New York Neckset", a repair so shockingly cheap and cheerful I will not describe it here in any detail.  Still, it is also highly effective and I managed to bring back to playing condition a violin it would otherwise have been impossible to fit a bridge to.

  Anna, meanwhile, has rehaired herself out of a job!