Chapel violins: day 2

mmmm. What a delicious breakfast my fellow student and I had. Well cooked porridge, followed by scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, fried potatoes and raw tomato.

We arrived to the workshop on time this morning and were the first two there. Eugene wasn't too far behind us. It was only us three today.

Stephan continued to work on his carving, whilst John helped me with the finishing of fitting my pegs. By the end of yesterday, I had completely fitted the pegs, but today needed to trim them to length, drill holes and polish them up.
I was chuffed when John declared that they could stay on that instrument and were a professional fit!

The rest of the day found me working on making the nut a better shape and watching John patch a chip in the fingerboard using ebony dust which he made from an old peg and bond edit with super glue. There were many other discussions throughout the day which ranged from different ways to tell a good instrument from a poorly made one to feeling the underside of a cello fingerboard to tell if it were a French instrument. It felt a bit like baby cord fabric, as the blades on the planes the craftsmen used had little grooves in them.

Eugene continued to work on his cello restoration and enjoyed hearing his violin being played by me a Stephan. It certainly is a lovely instrument and compares well to another instrument which John has for sale. Tomorrow, I might even get to compare it with an instrument worth £16,000.

I have been making a list of the tools which I will need to complete these repairs back at home. I will need to order some of these things from a German company when I get home.

After leaving the workshop for the day, Stephan and I called in at "home", then went on a walk down the country lane. I was hoping to find a sunset as glorious as yesterday's, but it was not to be. We found it interesting looking at the black slugs and exchanging our knowledge on our photographic knowledge. Stephan also has a Nikon, but his is the D7000 model. We stopped to play with the dandelion seeds. This was new to Stephan, who had seen them on movies, but not in real life.

 

At the end of the path we come across the train line, which is extremely busy. Four trains in less than as

many minutes, I reckon. We then turned around a retraced our footsteps. After our being on one feet for an hour and a half, we entered one of the local pubs and I enjoyed a pint of Stella Artois with my cottage pie and veggies.

A brief chat with Mum and into this post. I think it won't be long before I hit the sack, so that I am ready for another big day of learning tomorrow.

 

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