Violin build

Thicknessed by hand down to aprximately 1.1mm. Not as difficult as I thought it might be. Getting .001" shavings with a razor sharp plane makes it easy. Sort of.

Bending violin ribs is a breeze at 1.1 mm thick.

Here's the start of my first violin build.

After a mouse invaded my mandolin rebuild, I decided to move on to a violin, since that is what I'm playing most of the time. The mouse ate the bass f-hole and had babies inside. I don't think I can ever be comfortable finishing and using that mando.
So, here I am making a violin. Having made a mold and place the corner, head and tail blocks in, I'm ready to start bending sides.

Cutting pearl

Well, by the 3rd one they started looking pretty good right off the blade and it didn't break until I tried to file a couple areas. These things are delicate. :crying: I had to repair 2 + 3 with CA. Good enough for these. When someone starts offering real money for my mandos I'll keep making them until they're one solid piece. Until then, here they are in order of cutting.

I don't know if I want to try to file them any better. The chance of breaking them seems too high and I already don't like the repairs I have. I imagine by my 10th one I'll be pretty good at getting nice without resorting to a file. It's definitely getting easier.

Peg Head binding completed!

Yay!! Here they are in all their glory.

So what's left? 

1. Inlay my name in the peg head

2. Install the frets

3. Sand and fine tune the neck shape

4 Sunburst and finish

5. Make bridges and nuts

6. Add hardware, strings and enjoy.

 That's still quite a bit for me at about 1 hour a day so I'm hoping to be done before October. 

More peg-head binding

I found that the Dremel fitted with the right bits, came pretty close to finishing the job. I used a 1/8 burr and small dental burr setup the same as if I was cutting inlay pockets. With a little filing I'll be ready to put the binding on. I'm excited because this will be my first time binding a peg-head with the peg-head overlay already glued on. Before I start the binding I want the fret boards attached so I can be sure the binding on the peg-head transitions smoothly into the fret board and nut. I glued them on using hot hide glue which is what I'm using for the entire build.

A couple close ups of the peg-heads