Like for other violin makers, modern as well, a violin top is made from spruce, the back from maple, the inner parts from willow. Stradivarius violins were made from especially consistent-grained spruce and maple. Present-day violin makers select spruce and maple with similar properties. Of the master violin craftsmen I've known, they reported that they like the woods to age at least 40 years before rough cutting into blanks and age for several years after before shaping. Reportedly, the Stradivari family used chemicals to treat the woods, which may contribute favorably to the sound quality. However, the same compounds occured in varnishes at the time of Stradivari's work.

What finishes were applied by Stradivari are a matter of conjecture. Limited samples available for testing. However, it's known that he didn't use shellac. Stradivari may have been as equally discriminating in selecting the best finish for violins as he was with all of his choices. He did finish with an unknown proprietary varnish recipe, though.

As a compromise to an oil finish, a violin varnish is used for finishes. The woods do need enduring protection from oxidation and sunlight. A good quality violin varnish is brittle, though, because the harder it is the less it deadens sound. Basically, the least plastic natural-wood varnishes are what the violin makers I've known use. Basic ingredients are gum rosin and linseed oil.

Aging a musical instrument is all about the grain and variant woods species and finish stresses settling into their environment. They move in different dimensions and directions with changes in humidity, atmospheric pressure, and temperature. What sounds great in the craftshop or store needs time to adapt to its new setting. And time to adapt from being made into an instrument to begin with. Hide glues traditionally used in instrument making have high moisture content that the woods absorb. They also absorb solvents from the finish that take time time to fully evaporate through the cured surface finish. Plus a finely crafted violin is a precious commodity. Storage of one probably results in a reduced moisture content in the woods from what would normally be found in a piece of furniture in a modern home.

1) The exclusive Butters episode.

2) The manbla episode.

Make Love not World of Warcraft.

what convensted me to never get addicted to WOW. i did play for 4 hours once and got too adicted that i had to call my shrink for help. Thanks WOW

It's like the inclination a person might have to yell "Fire!" in a burnt down theatre.

It's too late to warn people. The theatre has burnt down. We are in fact, geeks.

*****

Federal excise tax on roll your own cigarette tobacco increased 2252 percent from $1.10 to $24.78 a pound. What costs a tobacco farmer $2 to produce is now costing a consumer at least $45, up from an average $18 per pound last year. State tobacco excise taxes are responsible for another average $10 in cost per pound of bulk tobacco. Many state legislatures are considering increasing state tobacco excise taxes to equate to the federal level.

Supporters of the sin-tax increase claim it was necessary to achieve product parity taxation in order to prevent a flood of roll your own consumers abadoning ready-made products. Regardless, bulk cigarette tobacco suppliers have been overwhelmed with orders.

Small cigar taxes went up even more than bulk cigarette tobacco. Ready-made cigarette and snuff excise taxes also went up 250%.

This does not bode well for the 20% of the US population that smokes. Nor does it bode well for freedom to choose lifestyle. This is most certainly taxation misrepresentation placing an inequitable burden on smokers. Are we underclass citizens? Because we smoke are we servants to the majority? A dark day in American history.

I don't smoke myself, and to be honest I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, but this kind of abuse is just ridiculous. It's one thing for businesses and residences to say whether or not they allow smoking, and another for the government to step in and say it's not allowed anywhere. Or even within 20 feet of any entrance (just try to find anywhere 20 feet from an entrance in your average desk job office building!).

Unfortunately tobacco isn't alone here. Alcohol has been banned, restricted, and tightly controlled for a long time now. In some states like Utah they even ban wine coolers, for the love. And you know that since the government controls the only supply of alcohol there's nothing keeping them from jacking the prices up if they want. Why should cigarettes be any different?

What scorches me is that a product that has a real-market cost of $10 a pound has gone up to $45, $35 of which is taxes.

Beer currently has a Federal excise tax of roughly $0.30 per six-pack. Applying the same FET increase as bulk cigarette tobacco would add $6.75 to the retail price. Wine and sparkling wine FET per fifth (750ml) currently $0.21 to $0.67 and spirits FET $2.14 per fifth. But no, no alcohol FET increases, yet. When tobacco tax revenues don't meet expectations . . .

I'm not afraid of spiders, I just like them to be where I can see them.

There is a difference between need and strong want. People think they need to smoke because addiction exists, but they don't <i>really</i> need it. There are alternatives that can ween them off their addiction and, ultimately, if deprived of tobacco they're not going to die. So to pretend that tobacco is a need equal to food is inane.

As per the agenda to reduce the number of smokers it is more targetted at discouraging the creation of new smokers than it is taking down existing ones. But if it somehow diminishes the number of smokers that's a good thing. People are healthier and live longer without the tobacco.

Atlas can shrug all he wants.

Also I'm a little confused how you can half something to 10%. 50% I get, but 10% makes no sense to me. Are you saying that 20% of people smoke and they want to half that to 10% of all people? That's my best guess.

You are spending your time creating stories, creating a legacy.

And one time I put on my shoe only to discover a mouse had moved in. I didn't kill it, I'm too much of a softy, but I did evict it to the back field.

quote:

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I am a jaded taxpayer citizen, part of a small minority that's been unlawfully singled out for punitive taxation. Expect dissastisfaction to grow when the tax doesn't cover the program and they raise taxes on alcohol and other "sinful" pasttimes.

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I am sure the angry disenfranchised taxpayer would vote the bums out if they allowed smoking while waiting to vote.

And would that technically mean their victims died of a heart attack?

Supposedly, some people never find out it even happened; the eggs don't hurt and the spiders leave the body while the person sleeps.

And, even if they didn't try and consume her face (which they did), I could see a rational fear (even arachnophobia)developing out of it.

I think I was 9 or 10 when I went on a double-ferris-wheel with my mother and my cousin, who was my age. I sat on one side, they the other, as we slowly rose to the top. At the top, the wheel stopped so people could board the other ferris-wheel, and one of the bolts to our car snapped. The swinging arm flew loose--on the side I happened to be leaning on--and I was suspended in mid air, nothing to grab on but the slick plastic seat or the arm which was attached to nothing. It was better than twenty years before my wife convinced me to get on another one.

When I was younger I loved cats and hated dogs. Then I was attacked by a rottweiler and spent a few years afraid of even small dogs.