A progress report.

It appears that hide glue was used in the construction of the case.  Since the previous owner was likely a child, the separated joint was likely due to malicious intent and not due to a glue failure.

Adhering styrofoam is difficult since the material easily dissolves when in contact with a solvent.  I elected to try a urethane glue, held with a grip clamp.  It seems well held for now.

The next assignment is making fitting a bridge.  I heated the wood for 2 hours at 200F (to remove moisture), wrapped the bridge in an envelope of aluminum foil over newsprint, then roasted for 2 hours at 400F.  The aluminum foil excludes oxygen and the newsprint is a sacrificial material to scavenge any oxygen in the tightly sealed envelope.  

The feet of the bridge were rough shaped by chisel, then fitted to the top plate by placing sand paper on the plate and rubbing side to side until full contact resulted.

A radius of 42 mm on the top of the bridge is conventional for a 4/4 violin.  Since this is a fractional, I used a ratio of back plate lengths to find the new bridge radius of 32.6 mm (42 mm x (28 cm / 36 mm)).

Once the bridge feet matched the arch of the top plate, I used a wood pencil to scribe a curve by holding the pencil flat on the fingerboard to the held bridge blank placed in the correct position on the top plate.

I measured the distance of 2.9 mm between the flat surface and the center point of the pencil.  

I want a space of 5.5 mm between the g string and the fingerboard, and 3.15 mm between the e string and the fingerboard.  This means that my 32.6 mm radius needs to touch 2.6 mm above the pencil line on the g string side and 0.25 mm above the pencil line on the e string side.

I have a template for string knotching the bridge, but it is for a 4/4 violin.  Since mine is a fractional, I made a 0.77 (the proper one) and 0.8 reductions of the template on my copier.  Since I like the strings to spread as much as possible on the fingerboard, I elected to use the 0.8 version of the template.

I used a guitar nut file to actually make the knotches.  

The school teacher liked my chin rest idea, but wanted it changed back to “original” since she wanted the home instrument to be similar to the school instrument.  This allowed me to provide a leather combination chin rest pad and shoulder rest (see photos).

I threw a small electronic tuner in the case.

The nut was too high and I filed it down (likely cause of original owner’s disaffection with it).  

The sound post was very close to the bridge.  I tried moving it around but it sounded best at the original location.  It is a pleasant sounding violin with the original synthetic core strings.

I have received a personal message regarding my use of a spring to shroud the tail piece cord.  They were not a fan.  No buzzing was noted as I played, so it would appear that I dodged a bullet with that decision.  See photo for detail.

Grand son received fiddle last night.  

The rosin was an immediate hit.  “Two swipes and I have sound.”

He did not like the bow retaining latch by the frog, since it was difficult to remove the bow without catching hair.  I never liked that mechanism myself.  Fiedler makes a wonderful bow retainer using magnets for something the size of a cello, but nothing for smaller instruments.  Bummer.