Habeas Corpus

In Latin, Habeas Corpus literally means "you have the body".  That is exactly what we have this week when we visited the workshop.  The body of the violin is literally all together this week with just a little glue left to be done in the seams of the top plate to the ribs.  It's pretty amazing to see the pieces come together and to hold the whole body in its final form.

If you recall, we left off last week with the interior of the top and back plates being scraped down to their final thicknesses and then being readied for rough tuning.  Here you can see some of the stages of the scraping and planing.

The next sequence shows the cutting of the F holes.  This has to be pretty nerve wracking.  After all the work that has gone into the top plate, you have to cut into it and create some pretty perfect F holes.  It starts with tracing the pattern, then drilling some initial holes, cutting the end patterns out, and then the main part of the figure.

This is the pattern which needs to be perfectly placed.

The 3 initial holes to start the cuts.

Then the end figures are cut.

The middle of the figure is then cut.

To finish the top, the base bar has to be cut and then attached to the interior of the top plate.  Below is a sequence with the pattern as it is applied to the base bar block and then fitted to the top plate's interior.

At this point, the top and the bottom plate are essentially done except they need to have some final tuning done.  Martin uses some software to show the frequency response of the top and the back plates.  What is most important is that neither plate has a high response at the same point and they also don't overlap on an exact frequency like A440.  Below are the plots for both plates.

We overlaid both plots to check on the overlap.

And before we can start the assembly of the body, the final addition is applying the label to the interior of the back plate.

Below we have the top and back plates in their final form before assembly.

 And below we see all three pieces just before the glue is applied.

This is the glue in its solid form. It is melted and then applied a little at a time as it sets very quickly and is incredibly strong.

The corner, top, and bottom blocks of the ribs are first glued to the back plate.

 Then the top plate is added with glue applied to the blocks as well.

After the glue is set, then the seams between the blocks are glued and subsequently cleaned up.  Below is how we found the corpus when we came to the workshop this week.

All of the back plate had already been completely glued to the ribs and the seams of the top plate still needed to be glued.

Checking out the label through the F holes.

I really like how it is turning out.

 And there you have it.  The corpus front and back.  Really fun to finally hold it in my hands, even if the clamps are still on it.

Next week the violin should be all put together with the neck completed.  We'll show the fitting of the pegs, the cutting of the mortice in the top block to fit the neck in, and then the gluing of the neck in place.  While the varnish is applied and dries, Martin will work on copying the harp shaped tailpiece in rosewood.  Then it is just adding the fittings, fitting the sound post and bridge, and stringing her up for the first time!  Pretty exciting!!