What Does The Fox Say?

[ShaRroos]

Does that not count the wounds infliced by your feline?
Looks REALY Good! The number of hours that went into that is truely impressive.

[Ashtyn]

I made this lamp base out of an old filigree candlestick I found in a flea market for a very good bargain price! It's all solid brass; I made the necessary modifications for it to become a lamp base and finished with an antique bronze patina:

You can see an updated photo of the lamp on its designated base at the original post http://sculptyworks.com/lismore/index.php?topic=1564.msg8290#msg8290

[Ashtyn]

It's been quiet in this topic! RL has been hectic and non artistically-productive lately! But I got myself a violin! Yay!   

I've always wanted to play the violin! ...but we had a piano at the house, so they insisted I learned the piano, because we had one. My grandfather wanted me to play the piano; my mother wanted me to play the electric guitar; my grandmother wanted me not to make any noise at all! I ended up singing opera. But still, I always wanted a violin, so a couple of weeks ago I decided screw it, I was going to get one!

Violins are tricky, though! They are unimaginably complex and delicate instruments! They are as unique as people are. And the violin-trade is notorious for not being exactly honest; there's a lot of fake antique violins, mislabeled violins, inferior violins made of superior violin parts just so they can claim pedigree (one famous violin maker was reported to have said back in the day that he could make 5 Stradivarius out of one).

And violins are expensive.

There's countless 'cheap violins' on eBay that are also known in the business as 'VSO' - Violin-Shaped Object. They are so bad they are blamed for causing most students to give up on playing. And there's a multitude of cheap Chinese violins on the market - China is the world's largest producer of violins; most come from a place called Violin City (Donggaocun, just outside Beijing)!

As usual, I did my research, and while I found there are quite a few 'good' Chinese violins, getting one is a gamble: You may get one that sounds superb for $100, or you may get one that sounds like a cardboard box with strings for $300. Good violins (European-made are the best but there are some very good American made ones out there, and some Chinese ones too!) start around $500...

Well, I didn't have $500. But discouraged from trying to get something cheap on the Internet, I went to a violin shop here in town, admittedly just to window-shop and sigh longingly at all the beautiful instruments... Then they told me I could get one and make payments!!   

So I listened to 5 different violins in my price range played by the most lovely and patient lady at the store (because I couldn't play anything other than open strings) until I finally picked one I liked best! They got me all set up and now I have a violin! Squeee~!

My impressions after a few weeks of learning to play: The violin is a very difficult instrument. Mostly because the sadistic jerk who invented it didn't think frets were needed on the fingerboard, so you kinda have to invent the notes with no point of reference whatsoever when playing. Also holding the violin is a special art, and holing the bow is an even more special art! And that's even before you get started fingering the strings and bowing!

It will be a few months before I can say I can play something for real.

But it's nothing unattainable! I had the headstart at least of already being able to read music, so that's a step I could skip on learning to play. I'm doing it all on my own for now but eventually I'd like to get a tutor or something to point out what I'm doing wrong because I'm sure I'm doing a lot of things wrong!   

...and according to some, I have a special violin-playing face I wear when playing!

The Johannes Köhr, despite its German-sounding name, is actually made of Chinese parts assembled in America. The company that makes it, Howard Core Company from Alabama, buys instrument parts from China, sorts through the good stuff and the bad stuff and puts together a quality instrument. Basically, they keep you from having to buy a few dozen Chinese violins to find that one which has superb sound. 


08/12/2015


Took a couple of nice photos of the Johannes Köhr, front and back.
(it has a nice single-piece back)

[Ashtyn]

And time has come to harvest my potatoes!

It was quite a nice little harvest, and this is the first batch, the next one will be ready for harvesting in 20 days!

[Ashtyn]

...because I have a long neck, and sloping shoulders, I've been struggling with comfort concerning the position of the violin when I play. I tried getting a taller chinrest, and a couple of different models, but still I find myself leaning my head too much trying to keep the violin in place.

SoOOooo, what's a fox with a bunch of tools and exotic woods to do? Make my own chinrest, of course!

I put some plastic on top of the violin and put a lump of modeling clay there, then pressed my jaw on it to get an impression at the most comfortable height and position. The next step was to turn that lump of clay into wood. The primary choice of wood for chinrests is ebony. I tried getting a hold of some locally but they didn't have small enough sizes that I could afford, and the sizes that they did have were too expensive for me in my current impoverished financial state. Boxwood is also a popular choice, but I couldn't find that either. But I still had some mahogany, so, mahogany it is!

After cutting the rough shape of the blank with the bandsaw, I started to whittle it. I love working with mahogany, but damn the stuff is hard! ...and ebony would have been three times as hard!

Despite the hardness which makes progress slow, it's coming along nicely! Should be able to finish it in a day or two depending on how much of other things I have to do around here.   


08/12/2015

Work on the custom chinrest continues!

Today I refined the shape and put on the mounting hardware to test it with the violin. It fit perfectly on the first try, both on the violin and my jaw, so now all that’s left to do is finish it. 


08/12/2015

Today I finished the sanding and burnished the wood. Mahogany is so nice and hard that it could go without any varnish, but I put a light coat of it on the chinrest just to seal the wood pores, and then glued the cork on the bottom. Tomorrow just have to cut the cork and mount it on the violin and at last jaw and neck comfort shall be mine!!   


08/14/2015


And there it is, all mounted and ready to play!

It looks kinda thick but it's actually 10 grams lighter than the previous chinrest I used. And it is remarkably comfortable under the jaw! I practiced for 2 hours today without getting the slightest neck or jaw discomfort, even with my jaw still having the mysterious odd feeling behind it. My left arm got tired before anything else did. 

Ash approves of the new violin and chinrest. That's always important, to have kitty approvals! 

[Ashtyn]

So! I got a new violin!   

A friend's friend's friend was getting rid of things around the house, and one of the things was a violin. I checked it out and liked it, so I took it!

It's a Knilling Bucharest made in 2005, which proudly states it's a copy of a Stradivarius. It's also an oddity on what comes to the varnish because Knilling used for some reason a thing called Nitrolac, ...basically the same stuff used on classic Fender guitars (and other electric guitars too, but Fenders are the best!), which you can hardly find anymore because it's even more poisonous/toxic than regular lacquer while being applied/curing. It's made in Romania, so I guess they have different standards there? But that last bit is a good thing! It's made in Europe, with properly air-dried European lumber. I had heard before that the European ones have a mellower sound than Chinese woods, and I agree it is noticeably more mellow than the Johannes Köhr which is made with Chinese wood.

It was a fiddler's violin, though. It's been played and it's been played hard! The top had rosin caked in from never being clean (apparently that's a thing among fiddlers? Like a badge of honor or something!), and had some terrible steel strings, and the bridge was incredibly low! So I took it to the violin shop here for an appraisal/setup. Before the setup, the folks there estimate it to be as good as my Johannes Köhr, so that's great news to start! I had them set it all up for me, with a new bridge being cut to bring the strings up to the proper height, and the soundpost adjusted. The luthier suggested having the fingerboard planed as he thought the scoop or camber was slightly deep, but that was going to cost much more than I was comfortable spending, so if in the future I think it's a problem, I'll get them to plane it but otherwise should be good! It had a couple of scuffs on the wood that I patched up with varnish just so the wood wouldn't be bare there.

Another odd thing about it is that it has Perfection Pegs on it. They are some mysterious geared magical pegs that hold on through an internal mechanism and that require no skill at all to tune with (other than knowing when the notes are in tune). It had also fine tuners on the tailpiece but with the Perfection pegs, I took those out when I changed strings! No need for the added weight, Perfection Pegs are fine tuners!

I find the sound of the Bucharest to be indeed gentler, perhaps mellower or even warmer than the Johannes Köhr. I put my good Pirastro Tonica strings on it and the greatest difference is on the E string, I can make it sound good even at my beginner's level of expertise without barely any effort. With the Johannes Köhr it was a bit of a gamble whenever I had to play the E and it was really easy to make it screech. On the Bucharest I find it I actually have to want to make it screech if I want it to sound bad so it's a lot more forgiving. Some violins, you hear them played and you think "this sounds perfect for Bach", or Mozart, or Vivaldi. Something about the tone of the Bucharest makes me think of Ireland, so maybe I should go for some Irish fiddling music with it, I think it would fit it perfectly! 
I would love to try some Pirastro Oliv gut strings on it, but at $130 a set, it will be a while!

Also even if with 'deep camber', I find the strings on this are much easier to work with than they were on the Johannes Köhr, which were set up about a millimeter higher than they should be and had a really tall nut. The Bucharest has actually a very short nut, at first we worried the strings might even buzz, but nope, they don't. Perhaps the deep camber of the fingerboard is actually not a problem but a feature! 

Since I have this one now to play, I turned back in my Johannes Köhr (because I was renting-to-own it). It's one less bill for me to worry about every month, but I admit I was really sad to turn it in. I'd have kept it if I could. I got emotionally attached to it. It was my first violin!   
I hope it goes next to someone who appreciates and takes good care of it!

I took a picture of them side-by-side, a last goodbye to the Johannes Köhr. Don't they look pretty?   

Now as soon as it's ready, the Bucharest gets my new, custom and improved chinrest!   

[Ashtyn]

...just some good ol' violin pr0n! 
I was practicing earlier, and yay I'm making progress again! So I decided to take a photo of the violin, because!

I was trying to define the difference in sound between the two violins, and I think I found a way to do it: Compare them to chocolate! MMMmmm!

The Köhr was like 85% cocoa dark chocolate: Strong, a little bitter, with a dry finish. The Bucharest is like milk chocolate: Sweet, smooth, creamier taste with less bite.  ...yes, I'm rambling, I'm putting too much thought into this. Maybe I should get some RP, yes, some RP will be good for my wandering mind! The point is they're both chocolate and therefore both are good because chocolate rules! They're just different types of chocolate! 

[Ashtyn]

Some of you might know I love old things! Some of you might know that among the old things I love, I love oil lamps! I have a humble collection of them, and circumstances have led me to now undertake a restoration project with an old oil lamp! 

The lamp in question is a Master Lamp, made by United Lamp & Burner Co., sometime in the early years of the 20th century. Here's an ad for said lamp from a 1912 issue of The Literary Digest:

$5 in 1912 was about $125 now.

Mine is... well, not in that good of a shape...

Here's the damage report: This poor lamp was electrified sometime I assume in the 1950's (the parts used were typical of that time), so to do that they ripped out the center draft tube, did away with the complex wick mechanism, flame spreader and wick holder thingie. Basically what I have is a mutilated font, a hollow burner, and.... well that's it really.

These lamps are very rare! From collectors and for sale, I've only seen 4 (this one included), and two of them were electrified and one was gunked beyond usability (though a proper cleaning might have saved it). So when I got the chance to get one even in bad shape, I couldn't pass, because there's a story there too! (incoming story time!)

I saw this lamp first for sale on eBay some 2 years ago for $150, with a Best Offer option. Well, I sent them a $80 offer, and they refused. The auction went through, didn't sell, they re-listed it. I offered $90. Again, they refused! A couple more cycles of unsold auctions, it was for sale again, I offered $100. They countered with $150. ...I really think some people don't get the concept of "or best offer"!

So I let it go. I wasn't about to dump $150 on a broken lamp that would need loads of work and who knows how much in parts.

About a week ago, browsing eBay to pass time while waiting for my turn to post in the RP, I stumbled upon that same lamp, now on auction, with a $0.99 starting bid! I'm broke, but I figured I could scrunch up some $20 and hope for the best. That was my max bid! If it went above that, I would not bother! I ended up getting it for $9.98! They should have taken my $100 back in the day!   

So, this is gonna be a fun restoration project! The wick mechanism is impossible to restore, so I'm gonna have to improvise there. I could make a more standard mechanism for the existing hollowed burner, but I know that a Plume & Atwood Royal burner will fit the threads on the font (don't ask how I know these things!), and they are easy and relatively cheap to come by! I can fix the holes on the font that were there from the original mechanism and the subsequent electrification of the lamp easy enough. ...the center draft tube is going to be a bit of a challenge, but we wouldn't want it to be too easy now would we? 

Other parts such as the chimney, shade holder, and shade, those will all have to be sourced.

Today I cleaned it all up from 100+ years old of gunk, and fixed metal fatigue hairline cracks on the little lid that covers the fueling hole on the font. Thankfully that was the only part of the lamp that had cracks and it was easy enough to fix. Tomorrow I'm gonna see if I can find a P&A burner from one of the cheap antique shops around here!


08-27-2015


Well, I found a P&A Royal lamp in bad shape but with all the parts I needed intact, so I got it for $5! Then I came home, retreated to the workshop in the backyard, and worked on this damned thing for the next 7 hours!

I had to disassemble pretty much the entire lamp (which meant undoing 100+ years old solder joints), and as I got working on it, I found lots, lots of metal fatigue cracks on the brass. GAAHH! Took me hours to fix them all and then patch the holes left from when the original wick mechanism was ripped off. Then I got to work on the center draft tube! The P&A is a perfect fit on diameter, but was too long, and guess what, had metal fatigue cracks too! So I had to cut it the right length, solder the cracks, center it precisely, and solder it in place.

See that tube in the center? That's what it's supposed to look like!

...then solder the base of the lamp back in place, which I had to remove otherwise I couldn't work on the font. Because this is a restoration, not a preservation work, and this isn't a museum piece, I went for a full "brand new" polish on the lamp. And here it is!

Nevermind the burner is silver colored, not brass! Maybe I'll find a brass one cheap someday!

Now when I have money I will need to get a chimney for it, the shade holder, and a shade, and it will be complete! 

[Xela]

Its a pretty lamp... I want to rub it :3

[Ashtyn]

Its a pretty lamp... I want to rub it :3

...it's not that kind of lamp, kitty! 

[Aryn Gentlepaw]

OMG, I totally get a Fallout vibe from that lamp advertisement

[Ashtyn]

OMG, I totally get a Fallout vibe from that lamp advertisement

"Condensed Sunlight!"
"Friend of the Optic Nerve!"

...gotta love these old ads! 

[Ausar]

It is a really beautiful lamp and I do love oil lamps myself. Have a couple of them back at my parent's place in my old room. When you are done with the restauration, can you please take a small video of the burning lamp and post it someplace?

[Ashtyn]

It is a really beautiful lamp and I do love oil lamps myself. Have a couple of them back at my parent's place in my old room. When you are done with the restauration, can you please take a small video of the burning lamp and post it someplace?

Not exactly a video, just a couple of pictures of it burning. You can't really enjoy the 'flickering of the light' since one of the selling points of these center draft lamps was that the light doesn't flicker! But I'll make a video for you sometime. 

   

It uses the same chimney as another lamp I had, so I borrowed it because I couldn't wait to see it lit up! That's a 103-years-old wick burning there! The glass chimney is even older (it's from a lamp from 1887). It puts out a tremendous amount of heat, though! On winter I'll just light it up in my room and turn off the central heat. I'll be cozy warm. Everybody else can freeze! 

[Novaku]

My Dad would've loved a lamp like that, he likes oil lamps, storm lamps even more.