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:
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Printed Antiquing
I’ve seen maple curls that were painted on, but how about some stamped-on antiquing?
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Personal Billboard
Some labels are better than others!
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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,...
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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...
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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...
