a bridge and a tailgut

Pirate luthier adventures continued ...

The second violin I obtained via Freegle (number 9 in my logbook) came from outside Oxford and was very kindly delivered to my doorstep. It is a Chinese one from the 1960s and came with its original case and two hairless bows. It was lacking the bridge and the tailgut so I had to cut a new bridge, which is an enjoyable job to do. A lot of the filing and scraping is compatible with multitasking, so I watched the news and a movie while doing this. When the bridge was in a reasonable shape (I can always sand and scrape it a bit more at a later point but I was impatient), I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with the pair of SkyLark violins I bought recently. (There were only three strings in the case of this one and two of them were gut strings.) So now it looks quite lovely:

Building bridges is always a very satisfying job to do ...

I made the new tailgut from an old gut string that came with Heinrich the cello:

Note that the body is slightly thicker than the other violins I have. In fact the measures are identical to the 14" primavera viola I have, so I wondered whether this one was also meant to be a viola. I am told however, that it was only ever used as a violin (many years ago), so I also set it up as a violin. At first playing, it sounds surprisingly nice, even with a nondescript set of old strings. I am particularly impressed by the warm sound on the higher register - coming from the cello I have high expectations for the range where both instruments overlap, but don't expect to be wowed by the E string. Will share a video at some point. The attempt to record the same tune with all four violins for comparison taught me that it's a bad idea - I kept hitting the neighbouring strings as there are very subtle differences in the string height apparently.

On the label I first ignored the text in the round stamp, or maybe misread it as Shanghai. Only after the violin had settled in and sounded surprisingly good, I wondered again who made it and looked at the label again, and it says HsingHai - which I understand is a major manufacturer of all kinds of instruments, famous for pianos among other things.

So now I still need to rehair those bows:

 

This is the fifth violin I have managed to make playable (see details and links below). Two are now available for anybody who would want to play them - one for free and the other for a fee covering my costs. One has already been rehomed, one I'm playing myself and one stays for family history reasons.

Previously in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts. Currently it is sporting a brand new tailgut which I made from an old cello C string.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a better bridge. Good enough for folk I would say.

violin 9) is the one discussed above

violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts. I'm still gathering courage to try and fix that one.

it's WNBR season again!

The UK's World Naked Bike Ride season kicks off in two weeks time with the Portsmouth Ride, so I'll compile some relevant info here. I typically get the tip-offs from this page but don't find its alphabetical order very helpful, so I am sorting everything in chronological order, as long as it can be reached from Oxford in a day trip using public transport (also including some rides abroad in places where I might be passing through by coincidence). No guarantee, obviously, do check other sources and local info.

As time passes and rides happen, I'll update the list with links to photos, press reports, and whatever I find about them.

25.5. Portsmouth
2.6. Oxford
8.6. London
9.6. Brighton
15.6. Cambridge; Brussels
22.6. Cardiff
7.7. Bristol
13.7. Amsterdam
20.7. Portsmouth 2
27.7. Folkestone
3.8. Romford (East London)
24.8. Folkestone 2

Own photo taken at last year's London WNBR.

My list of rides I participated in:

2015 Bristol
2016 Bristol, London
2017 Bristol, Brighton
2018 London
2019 London
2023 Oxford, London (hey that's me)

rivers restored

Today's issue of Current Biology is a special theme issue on ecosystem restoration with lots of articles on various kinds of ecosystems from rescued coral reefs to land rehabilitated after mining, and general aspects from ecology to finance. My modest contribution is a feature about restoration of rivers, from the reinvention of what was once Europe's dirtiest river (not all that far from where I went to school, so this revolutionary change still boggles my mind) to the removal of barriers in Europe and North America:

Rivers revival

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 9, 6 May 2024, Pages R360-R362

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

The river Emscher, which served as an open sewer for the entire 20th century, has been cleaned up in a 30-year restoration project. (Photo: Eselsmann™, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0 Deed).)

a bit of a neck problem

Pirate luthier adventures continued ...

I've had several neglected/abandoned violins coming in recently that were kindly donated by fellow freegle users. This one, number 10 in my logbook, is the first that actually has a serious problem that may be a bit of a challenge, namely a detached neck. Not only that it has come off, but there is a whole crime scene around it with traces of six interventions attempting to reattach the neck dating to at least four different times. Obviously, all of them appear to have failed. Some have involved serious woodworking skills so I am beginning to wonder if there is any special problem with this neck that makes it impossible to attach it?

Let me take you through the whole story - first the crime scene - a 3/4 violin possibly dating from the 1920s according to a labewl attached to the case:

Then, what I think must have been the first intervention is the replacement of the block on the inside of the violin body to which the neck should be attached (but isn't). Somebody cut a little window in the back of the violin to do this replacement and closed it very nicely afterwards. Alternatively, if the neck was broken violently (as opposed to coming loose because the glue failed) it may have damaged the back of the instrument in this area and it may have needed replacing anyways. Actually my current favourite violin, the one I usually play in folk sessions these days, has the same kind of repair and it appears to have worked in that case without any further measures.

But in this case it didn't work and somebody started drilling holes through the heel of the neck and into the block to insert dowels and stabilise the connection. As the corresponding holes show up in the block, I conclude this happened after the block replacement. Obviously, the first dowel may have been part of the same repair that gave us the new block, or it could have been later. Closer inspection reveals that three dowels were inserted at different times (apologies for the blurred photo my camera refused to focus on this correctly):

The one bottom left came first. Then, after this obviously failed, a new hole was drilled partially through the first dowel, and a second one inserted (top), partially overlapping with the circle of the first. Still no luck. Then our repairer drilled a bigger hole and used a bigger dowel (right) intersecting both previous attempts. Two additional small dowels are found on both flanks of the neck closer to the fingerboard. I guess these could have been just reinforcements to any of the attempts above, so I haven't counted them as a separate repair attempt.

The fourth attempt in my counting only involved glue, as the holes left by the dowels are all filled with glue, so there was definitely an attempt relying on large amounts of glue after the repairs that involved the five dowels discussed.

So, well, all of the above failed, and I am left to wonder why. And what to do better. Will try optimising the fit and using the proper hide glue first, but any suggestions welcome.

Navigation aids for the pirate luthier series

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts. Currently it is sporting a brand new tailgut which I made from an old cello C string.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a better bridge. Good enough for folk I would say.

violin 10) is the broken one discussed above