In Fine Form

This week's visit out to the Brunkalla shop found the top and bottom pieces shaped and ready for purfling to be added. The side pieces are also sitting in the form and attached to the corner blocks. Everything is coming together quite nicely and we can expect the violin to be finished up by mid-May. Our pegs have also been delivered so the only part of the fittings still needed is the tailpiece which Martin will make himself.

Here I am holding the top (left) and bottom (right) pieces. The grain on both is just beautiful. As you can see, I'm quite happy with the way they have turned out.

If you remember, a week ago, these were just rough cut into the general shape.  A lot of material had to be removed to create the right shape.  Martin uses a tracing router machine to get a rough shape on both the top and the bottom and then the rest is done by hand.

Here is what the two pieces looked like a week ago.  You can see how thick they were with just the shape cut out.  

And here is the top mounted next to the tracing form after the rough routing.

This is the bottom piece during the tracing process. 

Here are the cleaned up top and bottom pieces after the tracing is done and then sanded.  

Next came the cutting of the groove for the purfling. 

Here's a close up of the initial groove cut with the Dremel tool.

Here we see the groove widened to receive the purfling.

After some more fine sanding and fitting and tuning, we get a beautiful set of top and bottom pieces.  These are still flat on the underside and those will need to be carved out and fine tuned.  When it is all done, these pieces will be 1/16 of an inch thickness throughout.  

Come back next week as we go back and show exactly how the neck was made.