Back in one of my previous lifetimes, way back in the 1980s, I was trained as a violin maker. I never made a living at it but I worked in a couple of shops in the early years. Ever since then it has been a basement workshop hobby therapy thing. I don’t claim to be any kind of Stradivarius but my instruments aren’t bad. When I finish one, I contact friends in local orchestras to see if they know anyone who might have a student that is ready to move into a decent handmade instrument but who might not be able to afford one and I gift it to them. There’s just one stipulation and that’s that they can’t sell it. They can pass it along to another person who needs it.

My father played violin when he was young. He was given an instrument by his uncle. It was made by a guy in Denver Named A. J. Vance. He had a shop above a bar in a hotel in Denver. I’m thinking as a maker this would be a really cool place to have a shop.

My father’s violin was made in the early 1920s. Over the years the poor instrument suffered some unfortunate damage and some even more unfortunate ‘repairs’. Some years ago I took the violin (at this point it was pretty much completely coming apart) from my father to see if it could be put back together.

I disassembled it and it was worse than I thought.

I had to reconstruct the heel of the neck, adding 4 pieces of wood to make it the proper size and shape… 3 patches on the inside of the top to fix cracks, a new neck block, replaced some of the willow lining pieces, rebuilt one of the ribs that had broken, replaced some edges that had broken off… I blended the new wood in as best I could to the old varnish. It was quite a challenge.

I returned it to my father a couple of weeks before his 80^th birthday. It may not be a Strad, but I think it’s priceless.