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.

Shaping Up @ The Shop

We took a trip out to the Brunkalla shop in Marengo last week to see Martin and the progress he's making on the violin.  It was great to see the rough cut top and back pieces as well as a nearly finished neck with peg box and fingerboard.

These are some of Martin's tools he uses above his bench.

And we're looking over the Schmidt Harp tailpiece that he ordered so he can make a copy in Rosewood.










Here are the front and back pieces rough cut to the pattern of a 1716 Stradivarius.

The darker piece is the Ancient Kauri for the back.

The lighter piece is the Old Growth Sitka Spruce for the top.





Both the top and the back will be roughly shaped this week using a form to guide the routing of the pieces.  From there, each will be hand shaped and tuned into their final form.  The tuning is very interesting as he uses some software to tune the frequency response so that it can be as flat as possible over the range of notes.

The next piece is the neck.  This piece is nearly done except for the shaping of the neck to match the measurements of my current violin.

The neck is also made of Ancient Kauri and is reinforced with a carbon rod and pin to give it extra strength under tension from the strings. The peg box is sized for 5 pegs and the ebony fingerboard is attached to the top.  You can see the carbon rod between the neck and the fingerboard in the shot below.

And here is the peg box and beautifully carved scroll.  This whole piece takes about 4 days to complete.

Come back for our next visit as we see the top and bottom take on its final form.

How Fitting?

One of the decisions I have to make is what type of violin fittings to use for the 5-string fiddle.  Fittings are the accessories that go with the main body of the violin to complete it.  These include the pegs, tailpiece, chin rest, and end pin.  Now fittings come in all kinds of materials / finishes / styles, so narrowing this down to a nice complementary set is a bit of a challenge.   Just Google "violin fittings" and you can see how vast the choices are for this.  You can find fittings in ebony, boxwood, rosewood, teak, tetul, mahogany, maple, olive wood, paddock, pernambuco, tulip, snakewood, crabwood, teneo, and tigerwood to name a few of the wood options.  There are also composite materials available as well.

So how do we narrow this down?  Well, we do have some constraints which limit the choices somewhat.  First, it's a 5-string violin so we know we need 5 pegs and a tailpiece which is made for 5 strings.  Most of what you can find is made for traditional 4 strings, so 90% of what is available isn't going to work.  Also, choosing whether to go with a traditional black ebony look or not is a basic decision I have to make to help narrow down the decision.  My current violin has boxwood fittings which generally match the overall color of the instrument.  I lean towards not doing the black ebony look, but the Wittner 5-string tailpiece that Martin usually uses for his 5-string violins only come in black and they are composite material as shown to the right.

The pegs are also a bit more complicated if I want to go with the latest technology.  Yes, there is some technology in this space which seems a little odd given that it looks like just a wood peg.  Guitars and other modern string instruments have had metal geared tuners for many years, but the metal gears would seriously alter the traditional look of a violin.  Well, a couple of designs have emerged in recent years which hide the gears either in the head of the peg or in the shaft.  In essence, the shaft does not turn in the peg box like a traditional peg which is turned to tune but then must stay in place via friction at the correct pitch.  These new type of pegs stay fixed in the peg box and then an internal shaft turns via geared increments so the turning is very smooth and very precise.  There are two types of these pegs on the market.

The first type is the Wittner FineTune peg.  It has the gearing inside the peg head and as such, must be made of composite material just like their tailpiece.  They also only come in black.  So this is an option if I go with a black ebony color scheme.





The second type is the Knilling Perfection Planetary peg.  These have the gearing imbedded in the shaft  instead of the peg head.  The nice thing about these is that it allows an actual wood head to be mounted on the peg.  These come in composite black, black ebony, or rosewood.  They come in a Hill (nub) or a Swiss (plain) style.




I really like the idea of these geared pegs and I like the option of being able to still achieve the look of wood pegs, but with the latest technology too.  So the Knilling Perfection seems like the best choice to achieve the form, function, and look I want.  I decided to go with the Swiss style as I think the more traditional Hill style in 5 pegs might look a little odd.  So this pretty much nails down the type of wood as Rosewood since the pegs only come in that for a wood look.

Now that we have determined Rosewood as our wood material, we can narrow our search for 5 string tailpieces to Rosewood tailpieces.  I found a nice website that has just about every possible type of fitting you can want.  As expected, most of the tailpieces are 4-string tailpieces, but they do have some 5-string ones too.  There are French, Hill, Baroque, and then a very unique looking Schmidt Harp style that was very intriguing to me.  The top of the tailpiece is shaped like the top of the harp giving the lower strings more string length which is supposed to enhance the vibration.  Sounds logical to me.  Given they have a model in Rosewood, I chose to go with it.

The chin rest is actually more straightforward since they come in the same types of wood as the other fittings.  However, there are so many shapes, sizes, mounts, and positions that you could literally customize the exact feel of the chin rest against your chin.  Given that I've been playing my current violin for 40+ years, I figured I'll just go for a very familiar feel and try to match the type of chin rest I use now.  It is a Guarneri style and it comes with a center Hill mount.  

So these are my selections for fittings.  I asked Martin to go ahead and order them, but unfortunately, the tail piece is not in stock.  But Martin said he'll go ahead and order an ebony one and then custom make one in Rosewood that matches it.  Nice to have your own luthier be that flexible!  I think it will look quite stunning when complete. 

Next week, we will show how the boards are shaping up.

Martin Luthier

No, I didn't misspell the title.  I really have a luthier named Martin.  Martin Brunkalla is a local luthier from Marengo, and after looking at many alternatives, I've decided to have Martin build me a custom 5 String Violin.  You can see some of Martin's fine work here.  He has built violins for players such as Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, Rhonda Vincent, and Monica Rizzio formerly of Tripping Lily.   Meet Martin in this short biographical video.

Below are a couple of examples of what his 5 String Violins look like.

I've wanted a 5 string violin for a long time.  Having the extended range of a low C string will allow me to play viola range parts and add to the range for improvisation.  Some have called 5 string violins a violina as a cross between a violin and a viola.  Most 5 strings are sized as a regular violin and add the low C string.  There are some which take a smaller viola and add the high E string.  Either can work, but I think I like the standard violin size and finger spacings so it is easier to go back and forth.

The first thing we had to do was to pick out the material to use.  This is where this project has gotten very interesting.  Below are the basic pieces we picked out for the body.

This first board is the one from the right which will be the top.  It is Old Growth Sitka Spruce and is about 1200 years old.  The top is like the speaker cone of a speaker.  It's the piece that makes the sound from the vibrations of the bridge.

The smaller strips and the left board will be the sides and the back.  The sides and back give the tonal character for the sound.  I wanted a deeper, richer sound so we ended up choosing this special wood to achieve that goal.  These are Ancient Kauri wood and are likely around 6000 years old.  Ancient Kauri comes from New Zealand and has a fascinating history.  They are huge trees on the order of a California Redwood in size.  These logs were found under a peat bog in New Zealand and were likely buried for some 4000 years.  Something ripped up these monster trees and laid them randomly down to sit buried for thousands of years.  Further, the oldest of these logs at the time of this event was 2000 years old.  Hmmm, sounds like a global flood to me!  See here for some more interesting facts about this very special wood.

The shaping of these pieces begins on March 31st.  Come back to visit as we document the shaping of these boards and the rest of the building process.

NASCAR Racing Experience

For my 50th birthday, my sister gave me a really unique gift.  She likes to give experiential gifts and this one was right up my alley.  It was a NASCAR Racing Experience where you drive an actual NASCAR stock car for 5 minutes.  While I could have done it locally here at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, I thought it would be more interesting at a more classic NASCAR track, so I ended up choosing Charlotte Motor Speedway which is sort of a home track for a lot of NASCAR race teams.  Charlotte is where they race the annual Coca-Cola 600 on the same day as the Indy 500.  I planned not only to do the NASCAR Racing Experience, but also to visit the NASCAR Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte and maybe visit a race shop.


It was a 7am check-in and it was still pitch dark when I arrived at the track.  You first check-in at the trailer and turn in your waiver form and you get issued a race suit and a pager to notify you when it is your turn (yes, just like at the restaurant).

Check In and Sign Your Life Away!

Crack of dawn looking down Pit Lane into Turn 1

Then they began to drive out the cars and grid them on Pit Lane.  There are 8 cars for driving plus 2 ride cars driven by a professional driver with a passenger seat.  These are pre-raced full NASCAR stock cars weighing 3400 lbs.  They configure the seats to fit certain body sizes as there are no sliding seat adjustments.  Some pads can be used for minor fitting.

Grid of the cars

The Main Ride Car

Cockpit view of the Ride Car

Suited up and ready to go!

At 8am they called all drivers together for the drivers' briefing.  This took place in the same briefing room as the cup drivers use on race day.  You watch a video with all the instructions and then Bob, the crew chief comes up and goes over it again and answers any questions you might have.

Drivers' Briefing Room

This is where I got a little surprise.  Having some friends who have done a similar thing previously and doing a little YouTube research on these experiences, I was expecting to have a coach driver sitting next to me in the car.  At least that is what my friends have experienced and what I saw on the videos online.  But Bob, the crew chief told us that we're alone in the cockpit and there are no safety nets.  Only a spotter / coach on the radio to you giving you instructions.  You're in full control of a real NASCAR and if you don't follow instructions or you go below the white line on the turns, you can easily wreck!  So needless to say, the anxiety level went up just a little.  On top of that, they told us that there are multiple drivers out on the track at the same time as well as the ride car going way faster than we're allowed to drive.  So passing is allowed if you're given an OK to pass.  The ride car would have the outside lane and can pass you even on the turns so you must keep on your race line.  Other rules: No burnouts or you go home; If you stall twice on pit lane, you only get a ride in the ride car; No driving below the white line or you'll wreck.

Once the briefing was over, we walked back through the garage area and gathered in Pit Lane waiting for our pager to go off signaling our turn to drive.

Victory Lane

My pager went off after about 5 minutes and I got in line to get ear buds taped in and fitted for a helmet.  Then you just wait for the right car that fits you to come back in and then you're taken out to get strapped into the harness, connected to the radio system, and hook up the driver's side window net.  Then you wait for your spotter / coach to address you and they start the engine.  This Camry is the car I drove.

When you're told to go, you start the car off in 1st gear and bring it up to 3000 rpm and shift into the next gear until you're into 4th gear at the end of pit lane.  Then you stay on the apron around Turns 1 and 2 until you're on the backstretch where you can merge onto the race track.  From there, they have you bring it up to 4000 rpm and keep it constant around the whole track.  There are markers painted on the track that you need to thread so that you're lined up perfectly going into the turn and coming out of the turn.  Charlotte Motor Speedway has 24 degree banking in the turns which is pretty steep, so you will feel the lateral G-forces.  Once you prove you can hold the constant rpms and hit your marks, they will tell you to gradually increase your rpms by 200 rpm increments.  So Lap 1 was 4000 and Lap 2 was 4200.  I ended up in some traffic on Lap 3 and had to stay behind a slower car on the track at about 3800 rpm, so I sort of lost a lap, but the coach told me to get close to the car in front of me coming out of Turn 2 and get ready to pass.  He gave me the OK to pass on the backstretch and I got to punch it and race past the slower car.  Then he told me to go to 4400 rpms and then 5 seconds later told me to go to 4600 rpms for my last lap.   After the checkered flag, you bring it back down to about 2000 rpms and merge back on to the apron on the backstretch and bring the car into Pit Lane and coast to a stop.

Here's a video of several drivers after I finished starting down Pit Lane and coming around on their race laps to give you a feel for how it runs and how many cars are on track at the same time.

Five minutes and it's all over.  My top speed was 143.10 mph.  It was an awesome drive and very worth the trip.  Would I do it again?  You bet!!  But I'd probably go for 8 laps and top 150 mph.

So after watching a few more drivers take their turns, I checked out and hopped into my rental Mustang to leave the speedway.  Somehow this muscle car felt way slow...

Happy Birthday, Tara!

Someone turned 19 today! Happy birthday, Tara!