Sometimes a new creation takes a long time to be born. Several years ago, when I was first posting this blog on my Journey Oracle website, I wrote about making a spike fiddle from my Grandmother's bed. In almost all the time between that experience and now, I have been making a new spike fiddle. Tonight I put the deer hide left over from making a frame drum onto the sound chest. Now there is only the fitting of the strings and the rosin on the bow.
During the making of this new spike fiddle, I learned about how to apply orange shellac, also called French Polish, to the wooden newel posts and head boards, mostly by learning how not to apply it. I also was shown by a young clerk at a local hardware store that sometimes something new joins with something old, and learned to seal the shellac with Show Car glaze. I even discovered that Barbecue gel lighter fluid is just the right kind of alcohol to thin the shellac.
I wonder what my great great Grandfather Samuel Webb, who built the bed in 1896, would think of that? I bet he would like knowing that his work is still being shaped and sanded and polished. And I'm pretty certain that this ancient wood from Russel County Virginia wants to sing with this young deer from Cortes Island, British Columbia. May the first song feed all my ancestors.
