Summer Course 2011

Monday 29th August.

Sadly I had to miss working on the violin in May due to a shoulder injury I incurred whilst gardening (being impatient and not waiting for Ed to move a large urn for me!) My shoulder is still not quite right but I decided I could delay no longer and just be careful.. The first day felt quite productive I was able to almost finish scraping out the back piece and get some more saw cuts on the scroll.

The markings show how painstaking it is to get the piece to its correct thickness, its a matter of scrape measure, scrape measure etc etc. We use dial calipers for maximum accuracy and at this stage i was using a scraper rather than the thumb planes.

 The scroll is still in its early stages really.. quite a way to go yet. Its useful to have something else to work on when the scraping gets too tedious :-)

Overall a very satisfying start to the week.

It was lovely to be back and see some of the people I met last year and lots of new faces too.

Tuesday 30th 

Easter Course 2011

Before hollowing out the back I had to finish planing and scraping the front to a perfect finish. Below is a diagram I used to guide me in shaping the contours. Using the pencil callipers i had to keep marking out and shaving more off until my lines resembled the picture.

                                                               

                                               

                                               

Nearly there! (with a lot of help)

Then i had to mark out where the f holes had to go to give me another reference point for the final finished shape. This had to be done several times to make sure the holes will 'sit right' all of this is done by eye looking at the plate side on then adjusting with the cabinet scraper, redrawing the holes on until i got the Ok from a teacher. A whole day spent finishing the front arching was well worth the end result.

I spent most of the next day gouging out the back. Using the pencil callipers set to 6mm i had to keep hollowing out inside the guideline i'd drawn before until it was all under 6mm. It wasn't as scary as I thought but then I took it really slow because the whole thing could split at the joint or worst case I could go too deep. I had to stop and work on the scroll in the afternoon as my palm was really sore from the pressure of holding the gouge. I will post pics of the scroll at a later stage.

The last morning was spent using the shoe planes. With another diagram to help me with the thickness's i had to aim for 5mm right at the centre then graduating out to 4.5 - 4.0 3.5 etc with the thinnest part being 2.6 at one end and 2.8 at the other. All the time just shaving tiny amounts off and then stopping to measure with dial callipers. Getting this right is crucial to the sound it will make.

I've still got a bit more to do on this but the centre is bang on 5mm now and my edges just need uniforming off to the  2.6 and 2.8 measurements. Its unbelievably fiddly!!

I came home with a cracking blister to show for my efforts :-)

I can now go along to some 'pay as you go' classes in May and then ive booked a whole week at the end of summer. I'm past the halfway point now, but I am very slow! so who knows when i'll be finished. I will be sure to upload a video of me playing it ( better get practising those scales!)

Jan - March 2011

So here I am temporarily glued together :-) Even though the wooden mould is still inside it's exciting to get to this stage of actually looking like a violin. Lots more work to do. The next job was to align the outside edges  to prepare for the inlay.

After a bit of planing and rasping it was looking well shapely! But soon it had to be taken taken apart and on to the next stage..

This is a purfling marker. Its used for scoring the wood to produce a perfect line around the edge, but first i had to practice on an offcut.

 After scoring i had to use a craft knife to cut a precise channel in the wood and then use the dibber or was it dibbler? to remove the wood from the channel. I made several very bad attempts and i was getting more nervous.. but eventually they thought i should just go for it. I had been practising on the spruce which is much harder to work on being a softwood, this is done with good reason because by the time i got to work on the actual backpiece made of maple it was much easier.

 I was really pleased with my scoring..i did get a luthier to make the first couple of cuts with the craft knife because if you go wrong at this stage..its very difficult to put it right.

 WhooHoo! All was going well. The dark line you see is the purfling, its made from 3 very fine layers of wood sandwiched together I had just layed it in at this stage to check my channel was deep enough, as you can see i still had more to cut away.  To get a perfect snug fit i had to heat the purfling on a lightbulb to bend it.

 The pic above and below show the finished inlay all hammered in glued and using a small gouge fluted all round to sink it right in.  Those amazing beesting corners were achieved by shaving minute amounts off the purfling at about a 45 degree angle.  It all went really well..much better than i thought, and i would say that I enjoyed this stage the most so far.

After finishing the front inlay I returned to the back plate and planed using those tiny shoe planes to finish off the arching. I had to keep drawing contours around using the calipers with pencil. It was painstakingly slow! and then just when i thought it was nearly done.. i  had to shave even more off with a cabinet scraper.

An important part of the cambridge violin making workshops is the shared supper we bring to feast in-between the 2 sessions. Above is the soup starter which is supplied on a rota basis between myself and 2 others. This was a scrumptious vegetable soup by Dave :-) Below is the table typically laid with yummy cheeses, hams, salads, breads, olives & humous. Pudding is always a divine cake baked by Tim.

After much fine scraping, the maple is finished off as smooth as can be. It looks fabulous!

My last job for this end of term was to prepare the back for gouging out the inside by marking out 5mm from the edge and anything inside this gets hollowed out but working with very precise measurements (i'm quite terrified of doing this!) The maple will sit in this cradle relief shape of a violin to protect it. Just a few weeks to wait until the easter 3 day course when I can make a start on this.

Sept to December

Unfortunately my camera dates were set wrong so I have no record of exactly when I did what! but i can remember what order I did things in and you will have a sense of the very slow timescale this stage of the project involves (well its all very slow really!)

My next Job was to get a really precise flat edge to my ribs..this is because i would then use them to mark out the actual shape of the violin front and back. The way to achieve perfect levelling was to use a slab of granite covered with graphite. I had to keep rubbing the whole rib structure on the graphite and any marks left were planed off.

Next was the same process with the front and back wood..getting perfect flatness so the two surfaces could marry precisely to draw around. I loved using the huge plane, i felt much more confident working with such a solid amount of wood!

Now the marking out. The teacher helped me line up with exact markings for centres and other angles and then 2 traces were done the second one using a pencil in a washer to get a 4-5 mm sawing guide line.

Now the really scary bit! which thankfully I didn't have to do. The Luthier disappeared into the machine room

 ( where we are not allowed) and cut it. I did a very dumb thing and took a picture of him ..the flash startled him :-/ but he didn't slip! I was so embarrassed.

Wow.. i was so excited to now have 2 violin shapes to work with.. felt like I was really getting somewhere (for about 5 minutes!) 

Some more markings were added to give me a rough guide to what would be going where like the f holes and the highest point of the arching. I then had to make saw cuts up the neck end as this would be too difficult to gouge out. The saw in the picture is a Japanese one.. they are clever saws as they cut on the backstroke.

A depth guide line was marked ready for the job of gouging out all the excess wood to form the main rough arch shape. As you can see there is quite a lot to chip away at! 

 

Gouging is probably my least favourite tool but im hoping that the more i use it the more i will learn to like it.I took many pics but ill just show a selection of the stages and tools i used to get there.

Working from the edge i had to roughly shape the arch 

Then the edges were routed on the machine to form a perfect flat base to later add an inlay (purfling) The circles were to remind me not to gouge any more from there!

                                        

Then lots more shaved off using these tiny thumb planes though they look like little shoes to me so i've renamed them shoe planes.

   

At last! Back and front rough arched :-) The front spruce wood was done second as its a very tricky material to work with..one of the luthiers describes it as a cross between bamboo and marshmallow, which i think describes it perfectly. I think this is how i left it before the christmas break..the next stage was to temporarrily glue the back and front to the ribs..more about that in the next post :-)

The beginners kit

Hi! and welcome to my Virgin Violin Voyage :-) Where i will hopefully engage and fascinate you with the world and language of Luthiers (that sounds far more interesting than tools and wood ;-) Oh and lots of pics of course. I must point out that I'm not training to be a Luthier its more a case of I'm on a course with Luthiers who are helping me to make a violin.

I am blogging in a most post dated fashion! I signed up for a weeks summer course with the Cambridge violin makers (Do check out that link it will tell you all about the amazingly talented people who work there and more) This was in August 2010 and soon realised there was NO way i could wait another year to get going again! So i promptly signed up for the weekly classes and have been able to progress much more with another 6 hrs every week.
So... Back in August I arrived with great excitement at the Workshop in Cambridge. There were about 17 students all at various stages with their instrument making and some making cellos even! After a tour of the tools and a health and safety brief i got cracking.

I received my starter kit (I chose the Guarnerius  model rather than a Stradavarius as they are easier for novices) I wanted to get a head start so when I signed up for the course I paid for a few extra preparations to be done.. the scroll was roughly sawn out of its block, the back and front had already been glued together and my mould blocks set in. All this would have taken weeks to do so it was well worth the extra £'s! My only regret was that i didn't get to chose the wood..but i will on the next one ( yes I am totally hooked already)

My first job was to sand down the ribs..these form the sides of the violin. In the kit were 4 very thin pieces of Maple wood (most of the violin is made from Maple.. its a very hard wood and  the front is spruce a very soft wood..both quite difficult to work with!..but they make a good sound so I wont argue with that) I was shown were the clamps and planes were kept and was helped to start planing off the rib. My goal was to reduce the already very thin bit of wood ( about 3mm) to a minute 1mm..definitely no less than 0.8. Its difficult to describe the mixture of excitement wonder and utter fear I felt while trying to get to grips with using the plane..and i still feel like that with most of the tools! Anyway here are some pics of the rib structuring process.

Sanding down all 4 ribs took me a whole day and a half! Next was preparing the blocks to fit the ribs to. For this I was given a gouge and had to again very precisely chop away excess wood so that the curve formed a perfect shape for inner ribs (called the C backs) to be glued to. These blocks are pretty vital as they form the inner skeleton of the instrument. The mould which they are attached to is later removed..so it all has to be a very tight fit.

Then came a fun bit! Shaping and bending the ribs on a hot iron. Below is a pic of another student doing hers.. I forgot to get someone to use my camera on me. The rib is wetted and initially wrapped around the iron with a metal strap..and then any final curving can be done with a block of wood,.but its very tricky because they can crack at any stage.. which is why getting it to the right thinness was so important!

Now they could be glued and clamped and trimmed

The rest of the weeks course I spent preparing the rest of the blocks, bending the top & bottom ribs and getting them glued..but on the last day.. a slight hiccup occured! there was a mixup with the top and bottom ribs being glued..which meant I had to sand down another set of ribs! but I had a lot of help with it this time round.When I saw Jose plane those ribs at lightening speed.. it really dawned on me just how long a project this was going to be!

In the meantime waiting for the glue to dry I started work on the scroll.. a bit of light filing getting rid of the bandsaw marks and some marking out for future cuts.

So that was almost a full weeks work and all I had to do now was wait until the Sept courses started. I'd signed up for double class starting at 2-5 then 6-9. I couldn't wait!