In the beginning, there was ... ah. That's what I forgot: before I can forge ahead with work on the plates, I need some arching templates.
I picked some thin strips of mahogany out of the leftover bins in the machine room at school last week. They had weird cutout patterns in places, but I saw free template material, and nabbed them before anyone else could.
So, once the plates were flattened and the outlines traced and cut out, I set about the tedious task of making twelve arching templates. Yesterday the weather was almost unbearably nice -- at some point, I had enough of laboring and took myself to a nature preserve for a long walk, justifying it all the while with the indisputable fact that I needed to leave the house anyway, to pick up my cello from its independent damage assessment.
Today was just as beautiful, but I stayed put and put in long hours, getting the archings close and the front outline finished.
It's starting to look a lot like a violin, at which point the instrument starts to exert a certain gravitational pull on me -- I don't have to make myself, I want to work on it, to peel out the beautiful violin hidden in those formerly shapeless wedges. Sadly, spring break is almost over, and I have some grading and prep work yet to do.
I picked some thin strips of mahogany out of the leftover bins in the machine room at school last week. They had weird cutout patterns in places, but I saw free template material, and nabbed them before anyone else could.
So, once the plates were flattened and the outlines traced and cut out, I set about the tedious task of making twelve arching templates. Yesterday the weather was almost unbearably nice -- at some point, I had enough of laboring and took myself to a nature preserve for a long walk, justifying it all the while with the indisputable fact that I needed to leave the house anyway, to pick up my cello from its independent damage assessment.
Today was just as beautiful, but I stayed put and put in long hours, getting the archings close and the front outline finished.
It's starting to look a lot like a violin, at which point the instrument starts to exert a certain gravitational pull on me -- I don't have to make myself, I want to work on it, to peel out the beautiful violin hidden in those formerly shapeless wedges. Sadly, spring break is almost over, and I have some grading and prep work yet to do.
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