The wood still hasn't shown up. I know these guys (ILS) are slow, but I'm starting to get a little worried. I mean, they did cash my check.

In the meanwhile, I glued the ribs to the belly of the other violin. I'm a bit concerned about the joint, since the ribs are made of three plys of birdseye maple veneer, and it's hard to get a smooth, flat edge to attach the belly to, but it seems to be okay. Then I fitted the neck to the body. I really took my time here, so it's a good fit. As it turned out, when I measured the height of the fingerboard from the belly, it was 2 cm on the first try! I must be doing something right! I glued the neck on last night, and this morning it was solid as a rock, so I trimmed off the excess of the neck, making it even with the end block.

I've decided that I need a better layout process, because I found that when I fit the back to the ribs, there's a gap between the rib at the centerbout and the back. The rib curves in too far. I think if I had a way to keep the rib-and-corner-blocks assembly from changing shape while I model the back and the belly, the plates would match up better when I get to this point. Maybe if I just change the order of doing things and lay out the back and belly at the same time by tracing around the ribs, I'd get a better fit. Anyway, I inlaid a piece of wood left over from cutting out the back and shaped it so that the rib came down on it perfectly, leveled it, and it'll be fine, although the joint may be visible on close inspection.

I'll probably pre-cut the soundpost later tonight.