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!
