More work on my violin

It has been quite a long time since I've properly worked on my violin. About 9 months actually. Just for reference here is where I left off...



There are very few redeeming qualities of the violin above. You can see in grand generalities that something could be made from this hunk of wood. But the generous amount of time it took to just get it looking like this was disheartening. I will warn anyone, bloodwood is an awful wood to work with. Yet I had gotten this far with it, I feel this needs to be finished.

So over the past week I've spent a lot more time working on it. It's still no where near finished but now it is finally looking attractive. I've spent some time shaping the headstock into it's final form, though it's still too thick to fit the tuners in properly. I've also shaped the lines of the neck and body, however they still aren't quite in line and need to be reduced further. Also the picture below isn't the most recent representation, I took this picture Saturday night and I spent a few more hours on Sunday shaping the bumps to either side. I haven't finished those parts yet but they are looking much more pleasing to the eyes. Still plenty of work to do but it is definitely more enjoyable to work on something when you can see the benefits.



Expect to see more in the near future as I keep working on this.

Pictures posted!

So seemingly I can manage to go three weeks without posting pictures, but I can also remember the other thing I wanted to post.

Leading up to the end of December, Oz had decided her final project for the metal working class she was taking was going to be a hand sculpture of some sort. One aspect she wanted it to have was that it would have LEDs light up when the wearer touched another person. My job was to figure out the circuitry and make it work. First I found a circuit schematic that gave me a good idea of what parts I would need: a power source, a transistor, a resistor and an LED. Then after further research I found that two transistors in a "Darlington Pair" configuration would make the circuit work better. Below is the simplest circuit working off a set of watch batteries.



Then I added a few more LEDs to the circuit and switched to a 9volt battery power source.



Once Oz made the center piece for all the final circuitry I went about installing the circuitry in a manner I assumed would work. This included two transistors in the Darlington Pair setup, 14 total LEDs and several resistors. And all done free hand without a PC board to solder the parts to!



The final piece working! The 9volt battery supplied power to the whole thing, the thumb was the Hot lead and all the other fingers were the cold leads. So if you made contact with the thumb and any finger through skin the LEDs would light up!



Also another note is that I started working on my violin again. Last night I setup a work space and cut the shape of the headstock. Still lots of work to do on it though. It'd be much easier if I had the proper tools for the job but the proper tools are all big machines that are quite expensive. I'll make do with what I have instead.