charangohabsburg wrote:
When I fisrt read
"He [...] admires its unburnished beauty and the flow of its grain and then taps it with a finger to gauge its resonance. After perhaps 200 loving hours [...]" I thought for a fraction of a second: what, he will tap that bldy thing for 200 hours?

Well yes Markus, it appears you should have maintained faith in your, fractured second, first impression.
In Bob's shed the tapping and assessing a single piece of wood for a couple of hundred hours is the norm....no, no...NOT the norm, its a bloody ritual.
Yes I know what you are thinking and you are correct, such attention to detail 'does' require many, many, trips back an forth to and from la fridge to enable one to refresh the senses and validate their assessment. But once properties of such an integral part of an instruments construction have been properly established, that information provides the builder with datum from which to evaluate the second part of the bookmatch.
The beauty of process is found in the efficiency of understanding that, unless dependency is found from one plate to the other during the next hundred or so hours of assessments, which may then require a second innings of assessments, one is then free to move on to the pub to celebrate a job well done, and 'that' my dear fellow is the stuff of Solomon
Hoorah!!! for Bob, for surely he is the very wisest of luthiers
Cheers
Kim