Thursday, October 28, 2010

A little preview

My  mom came to visit me this weekend and it was great. We met some very cool people who are going to "adopt" me and tell me places to go and people to meet and be there if I need anything. I have lots of support and I think it's great!

Monday after school, our class made a trip to go see Carl Becker, a prominent builder here in America. He is 91 years old and still building! He of course does some things different in the process of building. And he doesn't use a bending strap to bend his ribs. He uses lead! It was nice to have met him, but I think the only thing I regret is not playing one of his intruments or his dads. That was the only thing missing during the visit, yes he had great craftmanship, but I still don't know about the sound. Some people from the Strad magazine interviewed him recently and might be coming out with an article soon. Brian pulled out some of his old Strad magazines, and it seems they write an article about him about every decade....  tonight the guys and I are going out for chinese! :)

This weekend is a bluegrass show going on at the Cozy Cove which hasn't been open since I've been up here, so we will see how jumpin' that is.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

A short account

Oh boy so much has happened since the last time I wrote......where to start. Ok well Friday I finished making a handle for my 12mm violin makers knife. It looks pretty good and was quite fun to make. I am now working on putting my lining in. I guess I left off talking about flattening my plates, well since then they have been glued (making a solid back and top) and I started planing them again to reachieve flatness. I have chiseled my blocks, bent lining and ribs, and glued them to the form. I have grounded my block gouge, and one of my knives. An interesting tool we used for test clamping our ribs is called "zulogin". They are blocks of wood with little steps on the sides for the ribs to rest on. They look like the bottom half of a pyramid and are pretty handy. Oh and in the process of bending one of my C bouts, I did break it. But hey it's all good and my violin and I recovered nicely.

Work at the Blue Bayou is about to end. I might actually miss it some. It is a nice place to work. Last night I went to a show at the Ironwood theatre and watched a gypsy jazz band, Clearwater Hot Club and guest artist Tim Klipheus, from Finland, perform. It was a great show. I had fun, quite enjoyable. Well it seems my posts are getting shorter and shorter, maybe I should stop writing them at 10 o'clock at night.....sleepy time, goodbye everyone.