Apparently the finger board was bent to hide the issue with the neck being set poorly. I removed the neck too and found a big mess of glue in the joint. I'm thinking I can just clean off the old glue and reset it and it might end up at the correct angle. Then put on a straight finger board and it should end up perfect.

Currently It's dry here. It's winter time and heating dries up the room. 30% humidity or thereabouts. I had already bought a new 3eur finger board from ebay in case I mess up the straightening of the old one. As the neck was, a straight fingerboard projected to a height of about 25mm at the bridge. Considering how dry it is here it should be more like 28mm ish I'm guessing. I'm hoping to get to something like that by cleaning up the glue and setting it in there better.

Hope at least someone gets what I'm describing here. Took a couple of pictures of the glue mess too. The glue is up to 1mm thick at the thickest point.

cdennyb said
Well, the holes are not of much importance actually, don't understand why they would have them in there.

It l;ooks like you understand the geometry of the violin well enough to see what the issue(s) are or were. Good work.

I make fretted fingerboards so i don't worry about building the 'scoop' into the surface as the frets are basically level from nut to bridge. But that's just me and my projects...

I see the straight edge is hitting the bridge just about perfect it seems. The string height will raise them to the correct elevation for your bridge although I suspect some additional fine tuning of the shoulder area will be required as you work the sound it produces.

Excellent to see another not afraid of reaching into the unknown.  

I was also thinking the holes should be a byproduct of manufacturing but was still curious.

My understanding of violin geometry is strictly limited to a few google searches and watching some videos on Youtube

Do you make your fret boards completely flat then? From what I know the 'scoop' on violin fingerboards is not very deep either. 1mm at the deepest spot on the G string side and 0.5mm on the E string side.

On the picture you were looking at the strings would be about 2mm from the finger board. I'm thinking I'm gonna aim for 3-4mm since the finger board will likely drop 3mm or so in the summer when humidity is higher. I have another bridge blank so I could try making a "winter bridge" too.

As far as jumping into the unknown. That's where the fun of it is. Not to brag but I'm generally not a complete disaster when it comes to making things with my hands either. The worst thing about violins I feel is how a lot of people are so secretive about how and why they do things and everyone always seems to encourage people not to do anything to their violin.

MrYikes said
Ain't playin' violin fun?
The holes in the neck look like alignment holes for a jig and maybe to secure the neck while glue dries.
You might consider putting in a thin hardwood shim if the angle is tooooo severe.
But you probably already thought of that.
I had a fingerboard that veered off to the right, so I just sanded it to a more visually acceptable line.  It has remained steady for 3 years.
I like your pics.
Onward.  

I guess it makes sense they would be some alignment holes. And yes, as much as it is fun to play it it's also interesting to have a look inside the belly of the beast. For me the craft might even be somewhat more interesting than playing.

I actually got the old fingerboard somewhat straight now as well. Used a heat gun to heat it and bent it in my hands. I might not even need to put a new finger board on it now.

A couple more blurry pics of the original fingerboard before and and after straightening. The title for the topic is also kind of misleading. After all I'm trying to straighten it to not have it bent.