Being a restorer is a little like jumping into a movie mid way. First, you have to figure out what’s going on. Then you have to keep the plot interesting, the characters viable, the scenery and costumes true and the concept and signature in line with the filmmaker’s. All this without knowing for how long, or to what outcome, because you’ll be jumping out again before the credits. Hopefully, no one will know you were even there, but in your old age, perhaps you will be lucky enough to lean back and in your mind’s ear hear that resounding chorus, “Wow that was a great flick!”, and know you had some small part in it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaxVwD-HvNU
Archive for May, 2013
Reel Life of a Violin Restorer
Posted in Focus on Violin Restoration, Tools and the Trade, tagged life, repair, restoration, violin repair, violin restoration, work on May 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Downstairs, Upstairs
Posted in Home and garden, I Love Holyoke, Tools and the Trade, tagged degrees of separation, Frank Lucchesi, music, violin restoration, work, workshop on May 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Downstairs, life goes on – including the usual bow rehairs, glueing, sound adjustments, and lost dog placements (I choose not to go into that at the moment). Predictably, I have cycled back into Busy 2, which means more phone calls involving phone solicitations than client inquiries.* I’m okay with that. It simply means another surge of effort devoted to the work room I’m creating upstairs.
In fact George, the electrician, has come and gone. I gleefully gave him two and a half days of pretending I was twenty-five, while I chopped out floor boards in the attic and ran one end of the wires that would supply a confident and updated source of power to the new workshop. I learned many things, including that walkie-talkies are now called radios. I suddenly remembered how dirty and exhausting this kind of work is, and how I admire and respect the skill, intelligence and perseverance of professional tradespeople.
Turns out, George plays bass and knew an old mentor of mine, Frank Lucchesi. I make a point of trying to do business with people in Holyoke because there is really so much skill and talent right here. This in itself would explain the connection, since Frank was from Holyoke, but music also provides an extraordinary web of intrigue. If the norm is six degrees of separation, within the musical world, the degrees of separation can amount to no more than three. I invite discussion on this point.
In any case, I now have power for all the lights and appliances I may need.
My body is complaining just enough to register a job well done. Next up, finish some cabinets and set a move in date.
*btw does anyone know who the h&%# Ramone Medina is? I keep getting calls for him. He must owe somebody a lot of money!
Busy 1, Busy 2 and What I Require in a Workspace
Posted in Tools and the Trade, tagged luthier, violin maintenance, violin repair, violin restoration, work, workshop on May 10, 2013| 2 Comments »
If only I could do as fast as I think. I have always wished for this particular super power. I would forego extraordinary strength, or the ability to shape shift, although that sounds like fun. I have NO interest in reading other people’s minds, and living with any kind of super hypersensitivity sounds like an incredible burden. Perhaps I would enjoy being able to control the weather, but I’m afraid I would only screw it up for somebody else. But if I could execute an idea as fast as I could think it, now that would be something.
Even as I say it, I sense the fatal flaw. I can see how my “see how it goes” approach to so many things would instantaneously become “see how it went”. Fine, perhaps, as I’m screwing together shelves and racks in the new workspace upstairs. Not so fine as I take the top off a two hundred year old fiddle.
In my work life, there are two kinds of “busy”.
One kind of busy involves lots of phone calls, emails, client visits, adjustments, bow rehairs, seam glueing, general maintenance and repair work that has to happen before the dress rehearsal/recital/audition/studio session.
The other kind of busy is when the traffic through the door abates and I am able to get on with everything else – the larger restoration projects, work on instruments that I own, business projects that require a more expansive brain wave, including designing and building that new workshop. Balancing “Busy 1” and “Busy 2” has been one of the more difficult things that I have had to learn, as an independent violin restorer.
Lately, I’ve been riding a wave of Busy 1 and only thinking about Busy 2. I have no real superpowers, but I have the ability to sit at my bench and, while I work, think hard about what does and doesn’t work for me in a workspace. For instance, things that I require include, in no particular order:
1. Access to tools, priority given to those I use all the time.
2. Clear horizontal surfaces where I need them.
3. Ability to move about freely, without tripping over things. I HATE tripping over things.
4. Orientation toward natural light, without being subjected to glare or intense shadows.
5. A means to store tools without compromising their care and maintenance.
6. Ability to readily sort through parts and material especially repair wood.
7. Adequate electrical sources
8. Ability to shut the door on the workshop.
Things that will make me crazy and so are to be avoided at all costs:
1. Not being able to see what’s at the back of the shelf.
2. Having to get down on my knees.
3. Backing my chair up into an open cabinet door.
4. Having to get out a flashlight.
5. Tripping over things. I HATE that.
6. Having to remove screws, as in having to access something that’s dropped behind the bench.
7. Not being able to readily sweep out the corners.
8. Having to move X, in order to set down Y.
I don’t mind getting out the step ladder now and then, and I don’t mind the occasional trip to the attic to pick through the wood pile. And the occasional trip to the basement to use the big band saw or the tool grinder is just fine with me. But I don’t like things that land on the bench top because they have no other place to live. I dislike clutter, but I like a happy, reasonable mess.
Probably, by the time I actually post this, I will back in the Busy 2 groove, which will place me upstairs finishing some cabinets and hanging a door. My clients, with their freshly maintained and adjusted instruments will be in the throes of their own Busy 1 cycles. So it goes.
restorersmind 