No Strings Attached

The violin body and neck have been married up this week and as of this writing, there are two coats of varnish on it.  We expect to see the finished product towards the end of this week.  That said, there are many parts to still be added to the violin before it can be called finished.  And once it is finished, there are a few essential things which are needed to make it whole.

I posted about fittings several weeks back.  If you remember, we got some special pegs which include some planetary gears inside of them so that they will act as geared tuners rather than friction pegs. Martin got around to fitting them in and trimming them down to size.

Above are the pegs inserted prior to trimming.  The shape of the pegs require the knob side to be slightly bigger than the opposite side.  There are counter clockwise pegs (left) and clockwise pegs (right) to make them turn the same way as if they were friction pegs.  To the right is after they have gone through the saw to be cut down to the proper length. Below you see the final fitted pegs in the peg box.  A small amount of glue will be applied to keep them in place.














I have to admit that 5 pegs look a little odd when you're so used to seeing only 4.

Here are the remaining pieces which need to be fitted.  The two small dark blocks are the nut and the saddle.  The nut which sits at the top of the fingerboard, determines the height of the strings above the fingerboard.  The saddle goes at the bottom of the body and is what the tailgut rests on between the tailpiece and the end button.  The bridge will need to be thinned out so it can resonate.  It holds the strings above the body just in front of the tailpiece.  The small dowel will be the sound post.  It is held in place purely by friction and must be fitted just right or it won't have the freedom to resonate the sound from the strings into the body cavity.  The ends of the sound post must be cut at an angle to perfectly match the interior of the body so it can be held in place.

Once those pieces are done, then the only other pieces to add are the rest of the fittings.  The chin rest just needs to be clamped on.  The end button is inserted into a hole in the bottom block.  The tailpiece will be hand carved out of rosewood as a replica of the one in ebony in the picture above.  Martin is completing that this week between coats of varnish.  Then just add strings and we're done!

Of course, no violin is complete without a bow. Bows are very particular and generally you have to go try a bunch of them to see which will sound the best.  But I found a special bow made especially for 5 string violins.  Codabow makes carbon fiber bows for string instruments and they come in a variety of different weights and finishes.  One of their bows is the Codabow Joule and it is specially weighted to have more weight in the tip of the bow to help you pull with pressure on the low C string.  I decided to give this a try and it really works!  Martin likes it even more than his own bow.  

And finally, we need a case.  I really deliberated long and hard on what kind of case of use for this special violin.  Do I go with a high tech carbon fiber for protection or a more traditional suspension case.  After searching high and low, I found the perfect case.  The Negri Lord case has a beautiful wood trim in the interior which I felt was very unique. The exterior is leather and should do well in protecting this investment.  

But finding this case wasn't so easy.  Negri is in Spain and coincident with my search, they discontinued exporting it to the US & Canada.  After trying some online retailers to no avail, I found a local guy who happened to be selling one privately.

The only challenge with a case like this is that the compartment where the scroll and peg box sits is shaped rather than just being the width and length of the case.  With the extended peg box for the 5th peg, we weren't sure it would fit.  We tried Martin's 5 string and it was very tight, however, his chin rest clamps are more off centered creating a bump on the side which forced the violin even more forward. He thinks with the type of chin rest I selected it should fit, but with a pretty snug fit.

So that should be all we need except for the strings.  We will use D'Addario Helicore strings to start with and see how they sound.  The next post will be when it's all done and ready to come home!

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!!

Just A Little Ribbing

It's been a couple of weeks since we've visited Martin's workshop so the progress has been quite substantial.  All the main parts are almost done with the exception of the final tuning of the insides of the top and bottom pieces.  The purfling has been inlaid, the exterior of the top and bottom are completely shaped, and the interior has been rough scraped and ready for final tuning and sanding.  But the most substantial piece that has been completed are the side ribs.  To give you an idea of the main pieces as they exist now and the names of their parts, here's a simple diagram.

As you will recognize, we have a neck and fingerboard assembly, the top (minus F holes, saddle, and base bar), the ribs with linings and blocks (minus end pin), and the back (minus sound post).

Once all the tuning is done, the F holes are cut and the base bar is applied and some final tuning is done prior to gluing all the pieces together.

The next time we visit we should see the whole instrument together and probably in process of applying the layers of varnish.









We'll start with the ribs this week.  If you remember, the ribs started out as just strips of Ancient Kauri a couple of months ago when I first picked out the wood.  Here they are cut to size and bundled together.

In order to give these strips of wood their shape, they need to be applied to a form.  That form also has to have some anchor blocks as you see in the diagram above.  Specifically, there are corner, top, and bottom blocks which the ribs are attached to.  The process is to first attached raw blocks to this special form and then shape them correctly so we have a whole violin shape to attached the ribs to.






Here we see the initial blocks temporarily attached to the form.














The correct inner and outer shapes are then traced from a pattern onto the blocks and then the corners are cut to the pattern and the top and bottom blocks are trimmed to their external shape.












Here we see the completed blocks on the form ready for the ribs to be shaped against them.

The six rib pieces were steamed to make them pliable and then bent against the completed form.  You end up with the six pieces with the correct curvature.

A number of special clamps are then applied as each rib is attached to the corner blocks and/or the end blocks.

Here is the completely attached ribs to the blocks still in the form.

With the ribs on the form, we have the right shape, but not a very sturdy structure.  To give it a frame, strips of lining get formed to the inside of both the top and the back edges.   Here is one side of linings being glued to the ribs and clamped on by clothes pins while the glue dries.

Once both edges have the linings attached, the blocks are all cut back on the interior to create more volume on the inside.  Some luthiers have left the corners untrimmed, but creating more volume makes a lot more acoustical sense.  The linings are then cut down and sanded to create a very smooth ridge and some width on each edge for the top and back pieces to adhere to when glued.

Cutting of the linings

This is what you end up with.

Absolutely beautiful!

Let's move to the top and the back plates.  The last time we saw these, they were well along in their external shaping and the purfling groove was cut.  Here you can see the purfling being inlaid.

You can see the purfling pretty clearly in this image of the top. Amazing detailed work.

The interior of the top and back plates were still pretty thick and flat that last time we visited.  These have now been rough scraped and are in the process of being finely planed to just the right thickness.  This is done with the good ole chisel first and produces quite a bit of shavings.  To get the correct initial thickness (ie. not too deep), Martin drills down to a safe thickness in 300 points on the surface creating some holes which also make the chiseling and scraping a little easier.

 Initial holes drilled via a pattern above and the initial chiseling below.

Martin uses a special jig that the plates fit into while he does the chiseling and scraping.



















You can see the rough scraping in this image pretty clearly.  The Ancient Kauri is especially challenging as it likes to tear when you scrape against the grain.

Once the chiseling gets down to the rough thickness, the rest of the scraping is done with the smallest wood plane I have every seen!

So from here, the scraping will get finished and some initial tuning will be done.  Then the F holes will need to be cut and the base bar inserted.  Then final tuning will be done and the pieces will be ready to be assembled.  For the fun of it, we put the pieces together using the positioning pins just to see how it will look.

Pretty cool to finally hold the whole box in my hands!

Sheer delight as we look at the whole instrument with the neck held in place.

Just for kicks, we took out Martin's own fiddle and tried out the new CodaBow Joule violin bow I got for when the instrument is done.  More on the bow and other accessories I got in another post.