wood

A few years ago I ran into a 3/4 cello with unusually strange top wood and now recently I’ve run into another, a 4/4. This is also an old Italian cello,

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that it was easy to shoot photos through my microscope by just jamming my cell phone camera up against the eyepiece, so I started looking for interesting things to shoot. 

For over 100 years, treating wood with nitric acid to make it look old was a common practice of some French makers, but this can compromise structure. This violin is not even 100 years old, even though it looks 300.

Modern makers think they need the very best wood but the old makers weren’t so fussy, as seen in this cello from around 1780.