Qu. When is a violin a piece of furniture?

Ans. When you don’t really know how to play, and have no real intention of learning.

One day I might like to build this or something larger from scratch but this was a finishing project that started with a ‘white violin’ where the panels and sides including purfling (thin black stripping) are already assembled. All I needed to do was sand, apply base stain, 15 coats of varnish with sanding to 8000 grit, polish, then reattach and finish the fingerboard and nut.  From a catalog I selected tuning pegs, tail piece, end button and chin rest.  Then lastly I contoured the bridge from a manufactured blank and installed the sound post. 

As for how it sounds, I am no expert so can’t really say. I did however take lessons for 9 months playing $800 to $2500 violins, and have listened to music passionately for 40 years.  Which rightly or wrongly leads me to think or imagine that it sounds as good as a $3000 to $5000 violin. Total cost was about $1500 and some tools such as reamer and peg shaver are reusable.  Carefully selecting the strings especially the E string plus getting a half decent bow made a tremendous improvement to the sound.  Like all new violins it lacks the amazing depth of a 100 year old violin, but it still sounds quite beautiful to my ears. Most valuable reference was The Art of Violin Making by Johnson & Courtnall. International Violin Company were very helpful on the phone in selecting parts that would work best together.  A cheaper Chinese violin back would have been highly flamed and more classically beautiful but I preferred to go with a less flamed European maple back as I was assured it would sound better. 

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