I only just bought my violin last saturday and I have already dented/scratched it!!!!

I was reading somewhere how the chin rest might go 'over' the tailpiece but it should not touch it, so I checked my chin rest and it was going over AND touching my tailpiece so I thought I try to 'touch it' gently and wiggle it gently to see if it would move....
After all I saw there was 'protection' between the chin rest and the violin (some piece of something made of cork is in between). It moved so I moved it to the left a little so that it would not touch the tailpiece anymore.

I must say it moves easily, it does not slide as soon as you touch it but you only need gentle pressure to move it, this makes me think that when I play it might move slightly anyway, it might even return to the position it was in originally(although have not tried this yet).

Anyway, last night after doing this I've put it back in the case. This morning I get it out of case, look at chin rest and.... SHOCK AND HORROR, I have 3 tiny dents near left of metal piece holding chin rest to violin and two smaller ones near right one!!! the varnish is actually scratched off and they feel rough! (they are right on upper edge of violin

Am I panicking for nothing? is this something 'inevitable' that sooner or later it will happen anyway even to the best of us? I mean, after all new violins will not stay 100% shiny forever (or they will?) I felt really guilty at first and thought I'd be scared to ever touch anything on my violin ever again! But then on reflection as the chin rest moves easily, it might have happened eventually anyway if it displaced while I was playing....

Anyway, enough 'rabbiting' now. Please tell me if I am over-panicking, should I take it to a luthier and have the 3 little dots revarnished? Or should I just 'get real' and stop worrying about the 'inevitable'?

thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu

You'll have done that with the chin rest tightener. It happens to the best of us. Just live with it.

But you do need the chinrest tight enough that you could actually hold the instrument by the chinrest - otherwise yes indeed it will move when you are playing.

Liz

Thank you Liz,
yes I can hold the violin by the chinrest so I guess it's not too slack.
and yes, it happened when those metal bith (is that what you call the chin rest tightener) scraped against edge of violin whilst I was moving the chinrest.
if it is one of those things and likely to happen to most of us like you say then yes, I will have to learn with it