March 2012
1 post
Violin Business Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/2415379050/ Will Whedbee working in his shop, on Flickr
I probably should have mentioned, when I mentioned my photos of the Upper Peninsula in the 1970s a few posts ago, that I have a whole set devoted to portraits of people in the violin business, and also some other violin photos, in my Flickr photostream:...
January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
The Book…
I have been writing a violin making book for a few years. Progress is slow, but I’m in no hurry. At this point I have a few easy chapters, not yet illustrated (the pictures will be half of the project, I’m sure). You can see what’s already completed to that point here: http://violinmag.com
The idea for a book grew out of the writing I have done for the Guild of...
1 tag
And now, something completely different…
(Me, 1979, on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/6559262875/sizes/z/in/set-72157628767257187/ )
Before I was involved with violins, I was a photographer. My last full-time photo job was in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on a very small newspaper in a very underpopulated area. It was a great job where I got to wander around in a...
November 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Jeweler’s Saw Blades
In my quest for the perfect jeweler’s saw blade for sawing out f-holes, I once landed the world’s last supply of these antique blades, defunct blades from a closed hardware store, bought at a now-closed tool store in downtown Chicago. The brand is Gilbert, and I tracked them down to around 1890 or so. They’re perfect for the job, sawing a wide kerf...
How Not to Sharpen Files
Before “sharpening” on the left, after on the right:
There is a simple shop method for sharpening files that’s mentioned in more or less detail all over the web. It’s done by dipping the files in acid for an hour or more, which supposedly etches away the metal, sharpening the edge. However, as the process moves on, heat is generated, and that...
1 tag
Another Variation on the Bass Bar
This funky thing showed up in my shop last week with a visitor. The violin is Chinese, about ten years old. The owner said it doesn’t sound horrible.
1 tag
A Dominant Violin D String Under the Microscope
This is a Dominant brand aluminum-wound violin D string. The outside cover is two flat strips wound next to each other (they’re coming off the back, top, and you can see the pair grouped together still on the string). The horizontal scratches, running the length of the string, are from the final grinding and polishing of the string...
May 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Wood Under the ‘Scope
A couple of weeks ago I discovered that it was easy to shoot photos through my microscope by just jamming my cell phone camera up against the eyepiece, so I started looking for interesting things to shoot. Some of the varnish ground samples on bridges, shown in an earlier post, look pretty cool under the ‘scope.
In this shot, the big vertical comb towards the...
1 tag
Gouges
Over at the Maestronet forum I posted this photo of the collection of gouges I use, and I’m going to repost here what I wrote there.
It’s easy to want to buy everything, but then you have to keep it all sharp. Here’s the list:
From the left: 30mm #7 for roughing, inside and out. The total length is 355mm 25mm #3 for finishing, inside and out. 19mm #7 for the edge...
1 tag
New Stradivari Violin Photo Set
One of the finest Stradivari violins in existence, the 1721 ex-Lady Blunt, is going to be auctioned in a couple of weeks at the Tarisio online auction site. Here’s a link to more about the auction, and some great photos: http://tarisio.com/wp/2011/04/the-lady-blunt-stradivarius-of-1721/
Last week the violin made a pass through Chicago, and we were able...
March 2011
1 post
2 tags
More Samples
In the last year my sample set has grown to about 40 tests. I don’t feel like I’ve solved anything, but from the samples, and my observations of old instruments, both in my hand and through the microscope, have given me a full set of criteria that a nice varnish ground needs to meet. At the top of the list are two things: sparkling wood fibers when lit from any...
April 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Grinding Pigments
I’ve often used home-brewed pigments for varnish colors. When they’re finished, they are clumped, and sometimes gritty, in large pieces. To put them into varnish, one first needs to grind them to a fine powder.
When I worked at Bein and Fushi there wasn’t a lot of interest in raw pigments in the art world, so we had to look around to find dry pigments and the...
1 tag
Old Pegs
A friend pulled these out of an old violin, and knowing I was interested in this kind of stuff, sent them to me. They’re violin pegs that probably predate 1800, and are maybe as old as 1750. (Notice that one peg doesn’t match—a later replacement, probably.) Eric Meyer, a great fittings maker on the west coast, tells me that they’re probably French, and, based on...
4 tags
A Nearly-Perfect f-hole
This f-hole is on a Brothers Amati cello dated around 1615. It’s one of the most beautiful I’ve seen and is perfect in execution. I’ve used it on a cello, and reduced it to fit on a violin, and a violino piccolo. In each case, when it’s the right size, it superimposes over the normal 4/4 and piccolo f-holes precisely, with no changes. That’s...
March 2010
9 posts
3 tags
It’s All In the Details…
People who aren’t intimate with violins don’t have to consider all of the things a maker has to. There are all sorts of details on a violin that have to be done in some specific way. Not necessarily one way… I don’t mean that. I mean that when you have to do them, you find yourself wondering exactly which choice of the many you should...
1 tag
A Really Baroque Bridge
I hope the friend who created this drawing of a very grumpy prototype of a baroque bridge will not mind if I share it with you:
3 tags
More Varnish Texture
This one’s interesting mainly because of its lack of great age: it’s from 1944, made in Hamburg, Germany; not a time and place you see many violins from. Usually I would associate this type of mud-crack surface with a soft varnish that’s been overcoated with something much harder (violating the painter’s fat over lean rule), where expansion and...
2 tags
Ground Coats
I started a series of tests this week, something I’ve always meant to do. I have a lot of scraps of wood with various things painted on them, but never have gone about it in an orderly fashion. Yesterday, I took a bunch of cheap bridges, scraped one side of each, and started putting a different ground coat on each one. Some dried right away, and I have some ideas about which...
3 tags
Arching, Revealed
Over the last few years I’ve been messing with a contractor’s laser level to show violin arching more clearly. It’s a variation of the maker’s idea of using a ruler and light to cast a shadow on the arch while shaping it,
and initially I used a series of photos, and then went to movies for the same purpose. There’s more from the laser, and a...
1 tag
Carletti Labels
Genuzio Carletti, in Italy, had a working relationship with Joseph Settin in New York. Carletti made instruments, and Settin set them up and sold them. The two labels above were found glued one on top of the other (the earlier dated one hidden under the newer). It appears that Settin wanted some way to indicate the collaboration, and wasn’t sure how obvious to make it, but...
2 tags
Modern Texture
A friend of mine brought in one of his older violins the other day. He uses a variation of my varnish that’s a bit more complex. His violin, which is around 15 years old and well-used, has acquired a really nice texture to it. It’s the most extreme on the ribs under the tailpiece, where it’s exposed to constant heat and moisture from the player’s neck:
On...
1 tag
Roots
A bit irrelevant to violins, but I got a few of the best tools that I use in my violin making from my great-uncle. He was a wagon maker in his father’s factory around the turn of 1900, and this is the type of thing he made:
This is the outside courtyard of his factory, in Toledo …
They had an opportunity at one point to sell out but didn’t really think that the...
1 tag
Nitric Toast
This violin is not even 100 years old, even though it looks 300. It came to me with several open cracks on the top, and as soon as I glued one, the stress of closing that gap opened up another. The toasty-brown color and the smell show that the wood was treated with nitric acid to darken it, and the result of this is that the structural strength of the wood has been seriously...
February 2010
20 posts
3 tags
An Original Neck
Here’s an interesting one. It’s rare to see pre-modern violins with their original necks instead of grafted modern ones. Usually an old neck is modernized by unmounting it from the rib (they’re glued on the outside and nailed from the inside for security), adding some on the bottom, and resetting the neck in the modern, stronger, way, inset into the rib, top,...
1 tag
Prime Choice
Modern makers think they need the very best wood, with particular grain widths, specific gravity, ideal species, from the right side of the mountain cut at the right time by the right person saying the right incantations.
The old Italian makers weren’t so fussy.
This 3/4-size cello is from around 1780, and it sounds great. Go figure.
2 tags
Texture
I have quite a few shots of varnish texture in my collection. This very attractive example is on a Gand & Bernardel violin from the 1860s.
Sometimes texture only shows in protected or low spots, like the location above. This particular violin had it all over—here’s another shot:
1 tag
Printed Antiquing
I’ve seen maple curls that were painted on, but how about some stamped-on antiquing?
1 tag
Personal Billboard
Some labels are better than others!
1 tag
Pinpricks and Dimples
There’s a tool in Stradivari’s collection of tools that’s designed to prick depth marks in plates to be used in graduation. It looks somewhat like this:
It is used to punch holes to a depth that leaves unpunched the desired graduation thickness. Usually he removed all of the marks it made on the inside, but not always, as you can see on the inside of...
1 tag
Varnish Pinholes
Old violins often have pinholes in the varnish. No one knows exactly how they got there, but they imply some things about how makers 300 years ago varnished, and what was important to them (pinholes obviously didn’t bother them much). This probably wouldn’t happen if the wood under the varnish was too well sealed, except we can see that sealer is there and that it...
1 tag
Finger Painting
The instrument head in this photo is a Peregrino di Zanetto viola (read about the instrument and maker at the link) that was made around the middle of the 1500s. The varnish appears to be original, and it also appears to have been applied with fingertips, not with brushes, as you can see by the fingerprints of color all over the surface. The body, too, has these prints, though...
1 tag
Power Graft
A friend of mine whipped up some jigs to permit him to make quick neck grafts in blocks of rough, uncarved wood that he could then carve so that his new “antique” instruments would have authentic neck grafts in them. When he came to visit me, he brought this dummy graft test made of a couple of pieces of construction lumber. Normally a neck graft takes hours to complete,...
1 tag
Crude
Maybe you’ve heard violin makers talk about violins with “integral” bassbars (cut from the top, not separate) and carving straight from the gouge. This is one of those. It doesn’t get much worse than this. A violin like this can be perfectly finished on the outside, and the parts you see through the f-holes will be as finely detailed as anything else. You might...
2 tags
For No Other Reason…
… than that it’s so pretty. This is a Brothers Amati violin from around 1615 seen from the top end. The red line is a laser line from a carpenter’s level, to show how the arching is shaped in that area. If you’re one of those people who just can’t get enough of this stuff, try this movie of the same violin, and here’s the latest...
Glued Strips, or not?
Some makers theorize that the early Cremonese makers inlaid purfling in three separate, unglued strips, the way French makers of the 1800s did. That has never appeared to me to be the case, and here’s one Cremonese violin, a Brothers Amati from 1605, where there’s obvious proof that the purfling was glued together before it was bent and glued in place. Notice...
Gemunder Shipping Case
Violin shop guys all like cool old cases. These days there are special shipping cases that aren’t long enough for and don’t have bow space, which makes them easier to carry on airplanes or fit in small boxes, but I didn’t know until I saw this that the idea isn’t a new one. This one has a little name plate, just below the middle hinge, from the...
2 tags
Old Linseed Oil
Linseed oil doesn’t dry very hard, no matter how long you wait, and that’s why it’s usually considered a bad idea to use too much of it directly on the wood before varnishing, since it could dampen the sound of the instrument. One day in 1995 I decided to pour some about 3mm deep in a pie pan, to see what would happen.
It took a year or so to dry all of the...
2 tags
No Varnish Under the Board
Many people have heard that the early makers glued their fingerboards on before varnishing the instruments, and that there’s no varnish under the boards, but it’s not something you get to see very often. This is a Dutch violin from around 1700. Notice that the central area that’s been hidden under the fingerboard is a little more grey colored than...
Whaaaaat?!
Setting a post in a viola that had just come into the shop, I saw this through the endpin hole:
I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I took the top off, and this is what I found:
No, it wasn’t working all that well. I’ve never seen another like it, but it appeared very recent. This was a very expensive viola—too expensive to be doing this kind of experiment...
2 tags
Studs Gone Wild!
Studs are used behind cracks to provide reinforcement. If the crack was a clean one, and properly glued, they may not even be necessary. I bet you could remove half of these, though, and not miss them.
Twisty
Here is what really bad top wood looks like. You can see the one on the left is growing straight, but the two in the middle are impossible.
One objective in choosing tops is to find ones where the fibers run straight from one end to the other, and top wood is usually split out to get this, but when trees have twists like these, they’re only suitable for building a fort stockade....
3 tags
Wood Aging
This is one of those things that I’ve always wondered about: how fast does wood darken, and how? The central stripe here, with three grains of wood, is a bass bar in a violin made in 1941. I had cut it halfway down (it was being replaced) and noticed that the soft grains to the outside were darkened, but the central grain retained some of its original brightness. The hard grain...
1 tag
Dragon’s Blood
Supposedly, dragon’s blood resin is the result of a fight to the death between a dragon and an elephant. The elephant has wrapped his trunk around the dragon, the dragon entangles himself with the elephant, they fall and crush each other, and both die.
Violin makers have a fondness for dragon’s blood resin as a colorant. It’s a striking red-to-orange...
