Violin Forum/Message Board

[catbrain]

I tried making scrapers tonight from single edge razor blades and razor knife blades.

The razor knife blade gave me good fine shavings-----
and the single edged gave more powdery fine cut .

The razor knife blade seemed to last longer.

this was my first experience with scraping . I think I REALLY like the look.
I notice it seemed to really bring out what little figure the spruce has. and it looks like it leaves the surface more reflective than sanding.

But soon- the million $ question---- what should the first coat on the bare wood be ?

Suggestions ? ( I know there are a lot of possibilities---)

[Michael Darnton]

Knowing that no one will actually do it, I suggest linseed oil. :-)
Or maybe a very thin wash of glue followed by the stain of your choice, depending on what you want to see.
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[catbrain]

I have done a linseed oil ground on the maple backs--- and I liked the result.
I may have even tinted it a bit with trans-tint.
I am a little cautious on the top because it is so sponge -like. Like blotter paper.

I might do it as ground on all the maple ......

[Michael Darnton]

You can make sure you don't put too much on the top: you don't have to give the top all it wants. One way is to dilute the oil a lot with turpentine (like three drops of oil in an ounce of turpentine) and put on one light coat of that. Another is to only dampen a piece of cloth so that you are dryly rubbing it on to the surface rather than glopping it on as much as the top will take.
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[catbrain]

yes thats the way I have done it before --- dampen a terrycloth scrap and burnish it pretty hard for a while . works great on the maple.

when I finished my wood working table -- I couldnt believe how much oil it soaked up --- like half a gallon. But not much sticks to it now

[Michael Darnton]

If you lay on the thinnest and most dilute layers the oil seals before it soaks. Imaging loading a sponge with shellac and then squeezing it out--when it dries, and it will dry relatively quickly, all of the sponge structure will be internally sealed with large open holes so that it doesn't act like a sponge any more. But if you don't squeeze it out, like you did with your table, the sponge will be more oil than sponge, all of the holes filled and it will take forever to dry. You want your violin to be like a squeezed out sponge and the oil will have much less tonal effect than if the wood were completely filled.

That's how oil got a bad reputation--filled, soaked wood.
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[Rick M]

At the risk of misquoting or mis-attributing, I used a method suggested in one of Michael Darntons articles.

Thin (~1lb. cut) shellac is used as a ground coat. Applied until it no longer soaks in and you begin to get a bit of a gloss finish. That's then rubbed out (I used grey scothbrite pads) and then used an oil varnish tinted with asphalt. That coat of shellac, even though it's mostly rubbed through seems to avoid the oil soak effect

[MikeCooper]

I used that same shellac ground when I refinished an old 1985 kit fiddle that I built and didn't like the original finish that I had put on it.

The shellac worked ok, looks ok.

On the recent one that I finished, I used thinned uncolored oil varnish as the sealer. That works well and looks good also.


As for scrapers, I bought some cheap cabinet card scrapers off Amazon and cut them to smaller custom shapes. Once you get good at sharpening a scraper, you can get very fine shavings.

[Rick M]

On scrapers…I’ve had some luck making scrapers from an old hand saw. The material runs 2-3 times the thickness of commercial scrapers and I like the extra strength. I put a bevel on the edge and then roll the thin edge as you normally would.