Bass Bar and F Holes

In the last couple of days I finished the bass bar and started cutting out the F-holes. The interesting part is that I went with my wife to a music store and just sat out back with my travelling kit and got ready to lay out the F-holes. But when I opened the kit, the F-hole template was missing. "Great," I thought, "Now what am I going to do for the next hour while she shops?" Then I remembered that the music store has some fine violins on display, so I decided to go in and draw the F-holes freehand, using one of their violins as a model. As I was doing that, one of the employees came over and seeing what I was up to, he had a better idea. We took a violin out of the case (100 years old, but I can't remember who made it) and used a pencil and paper to do a "tomb rubbing" of one of the F-holes. That didn't work too well, but we hit upon the idea of placing cellophane tape over the hole and rubbing the pattern onto that. It worked just fine, but we incurred the wrath of another staff member who was afraid that we might damage the finish with the tape. Fortunately, we did no damage, and I cut out the pattern from a xerox of the rubbing, laid out the F-holes and started cutting. I'm almost finished, but it's bedtime.

Manana, y'all.

Patrick