I actually forgot about this until we had some family over for Christmas and a few of them wanted to see it!

A really long time ago (circa 2005), I was in my local county's 4-H fair. I did a number of projects, ranging from models to 3D artwork to woodworking. My last year (that turned out not to be my last year, but I didn't care and didn't go back for my real last year) in the club, I decided to go out with the biggest bang possible. There's a certain family in this 4H fair who is our sort of... nemesis... in the woodworking section. See, my Dad is a professional woodworker, and our nemesis family only pretended to be a professional woodworker, so it was always irksome to have them to beat us out when we decided to not go the extra mile and make our projects look really professional. So my last year? I went for something that everyone we know who professes to be a woodworker has dreamed about making:

Totally a violin. Everything you see (except the strings, of course) was hand made by yours truly. The black bits are ebony wood purchased off eBay for a nice sum, and I forget what the rest is. I didn't go for the whole "real" professional violin, where you carve a little on the wood, then tap on it to see if it makes a certain tone, and I haven't actually tried to have it tuned, yet. There are some... acoustical problems that will arise, due to some misplaced inside parts, but I really don't care.

This dude cleaned up the local 4H fair and went straight to state, where it was defeated by a grandfather clock. And get this. The clock? It was a kit. That's right... My violin was beat out by an unfinished (as in, it wasn't stained and made to look shiny) clock kit that whoever made only had to glue the pieces together. I swear, half the sections in 4H are rigged. I'm not kidding.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 4:25 am and is filed under General.