CHAPTER IV.
BENDING THE PURFLING.
What I have proved is the best way to bend the purfling is this—place the heated iron (plate 5) in the bending socket, and, when all is so that a smart rap of your hand on the metal shows you the warmth is about as you want it, hold the purfling by the left hand, the mitred end to the iron, so that when you bend, by holding, say rasp [47] in the right hand firmly against the point, and letting the heat only make the curve you want, or nearly without pressure, you will, I think, not do bad work.
| PLATE V. |
So I am now ready to fix this ornament in the groove prepared, and have ready thin glue and a table knife to run it there, section by section, as, in cold weather especially, the liquid sets so rapidly.
I select the middle bout of either side (it is not material which) and lay in the glue rapidly, and yet more rapidly the slip for insertion, merely at this stage laying it flat, and going to the lower and upper bouts, joining the corners as mitred as well as I possibly can. Then I press the purfling as deep as it will sink all over, finally wiping all superfluous glue away with sponge and hot water. But I have not done yet, for there may be a weak place or two in my work that glue will strengthen, so I run yet a little thinner all over the insertion, and let it rest until next morning, when it will mostly have sunk somewhere.
When you are at this stage, great headway has been made; but you must now make ready for greater exertions, and prepare to comply with the requirements of the higher branches of this most exacting art, which you will when you model the back as I now begin to do this, which has dried overnight.
But I must pause to make you acquainted with the difference between "outline" and "model" of a violin—not by any means synonymous, as some have supposed and do yet suppose. I ought, perhaps, to have done this before, but will no longer delay.
It always makes me feel very angry when I hear some person, palpably ignorant in the matter, exclaim, "what a fine model" when he or she means "outline." And again, "this is a grand 'copy' of so-and-so," when example of such is meant; how can an example of, say "Mayson" be a "copy" of him? A fine outline will naturally lead you to expect a fine model—that is to say, arching of length and breadth, graceful and perfectly relative as regards proportion, curves, and an unmistakeable oneness of expression, if I may so speak, of every part as a whole, nothing whatever of incongruity or want of symmetry intruding to disturb once and always the gaze of the connoisseur.
But it by no means follows that a grandly carved and completed model has for its counterpart an equally bold yet subtly refined outline; on the contrary, I have seen just the reverse, as I have also seen most wretched modelling wedded to an outline fit to grace the finest instrument extant. But it is not often so, for, as a rule, where a mind is highly gifted, so that elegance breathes in what its body creates, a broken line or curve comes as a great surprise, and one is apt to doubt the same hand fashioned it all.
Be this as it may, call things by their proper names, and in elegant terms where no quaint ones are sacrificed; and if you know better, never let a false epithet pass unchallenged, for I do not see why a refined, but correct, mode of expression should not be as vigorously upheld in this fine art as in speaking of any of its sisters. For surely vulgarity has no right of place in its vocabulary, yet much language that is certainly not elegant, and not of any particular force of expression, finds repose therein; and a really beautiful and great work is neither made more lovely nor more exalted through contact with that which has neither the status of the one nor the other at heart, except that beauty or high estate be ready ministers of a rapacity calculated sooner or later to bring about its own terrible undoing.
So I resume, all being hard and dry, and begin to model the back.