Leave the Scratches please.

Here is the back of a larger Strad model that needed tons of repair. A heavier built model made for traveling and with plenty of power. It Has a happy home on the back of a harley.

The scratch on the upper bass side is what I live for. its such a great shape. The painter in me would think it was intentional, and a good addition.

Wish I could keep it.

I loved working on this violin. It had a large crack in the lower treble bout that was previously, and horribly repaired with white glue and another one of those needle and thread cleats, where for some reason they used thick black string to pull up the cleat. It's up and running now with nice little diamond cleats. This one has my kind of voice, great lows with rich slightly muted highs. The color is so unique, it was quite a challenge to match. It had a surprising amount of green in it.

I'm rather proud of my replacement wing on the lower bass f-hole, I defy you to spot where the original wood ends.

Lill's Cello.

Here is a perfect example of a cheap instrument bought and given up for being to hard to play. This is a Chinese Cello that sounded terrible and was near impossible to play. Mostly it was the bridge, someone had obviously bought a bridge blank and just threw it under the strings without bothering to fit it to the top, thickness it, or adjust it to the resonance of the instrument. After a tune up, new soundpost, pegs refit and doped, strings rewound correctly, bridge cut and fit, and it sounds great!

The Sign-Makers Fiddle

Here is a repair I did for a Local sign maker. The fingerboard is hardwood, not ebony. It was dyed with god knows what, and the dye came off on your fingers. I scraped down and burnished the living hell out of it. now its nice and shiny, scooped out and ready for more play. We decided to leave it "naked" figuring that if you have anything less than an ebony board you should own it, its a pretty piece of maple anyway.

Regraduation

Here is the top to the 3/4 violin in the previous photo. It needs to be regraduated. You can see in the photo how rough the inside is, the bassbar is carved right out of the top wood. It also has two cleats on a crack under the bass f-hole done with needle and thread from the outside. I hate this type of repair as no matter how thin a thread they use it always seams to show up, the cleats also don't fit quite right.

It looks so sad right now.

The Waiting Room

The some violins I'm working on. All various states of repair. Third from the left is the first fiddle I ever made. It looks so crude to me now!

The In House Shop.

My in home shop. I can't wait for my real studio to open up.