Violin Making / 'The Strad' Library, No. IX.

by Walter H. Mayson

Whilst this natural process is going on, you must take the large calipers and open them at three-sixteenths of an inch. Then hold the plate in the extended left hand by middle bout, inside upwards, calipers and a long lead pencil together in the other; and, beginning at the centre of the plate, draw the calipers carefully from this starting-point all over the rough surface, gauging with your eye for the present any irregularities of said surface; for I want you to mark every part where the points stick, first within a radius of three inches, gradually extending your field of operations, slightly tightening the calipers as you get farther away from your centre, until the edges are finally reached, when you use the double calipers, [No. 3], to ascertain the exact thickness at those places.

This being done, and the places marked levelled down, using spoke shaves, flat gouge [No. 50], and rough sandpaper 3, take again the large calipers and go over the whole as before, but more carefully; and do this time after time, until the plate is accurately gauged from five-thirty-seconds of an inch centre to the diminution of about a good sixteenth—say one-twelfth of an inch at the edges. My way of working has always been thus, in preference to using what people call "indicating calipers"; and my advice to you is, do likewise, for you not only get over your ground more nimbly, but you can get from your centre more accurately, I maintain, gradation of thicknesses. I give you what I have proved the best thicknesses for my backs, and am pleased to do so to all the world; but if you care to try a hair or two thinner in the centre, adding those hairs to the edges, do so; you will not lose in energy, but you will in timbre, a trifle.

Before finally quitting this hollowing out of the back, gauge for the last time, then use fine sandpaper, and leave no mark of any tool whatever, as by clean work you will be judged.

This question of thicknesses is an important one, but applies more to the belly than the back; and I shall have more to say on this head when I get to that soundboard, merely adding now that the back must never be weak in wood, yet, at the same time, never so strong that a woody tone is the result, inevitable, as the timbre quality is scarcely developed, and without that I never care for it.

It is desirable at this stage that I point out to you how the inner edges of the back are rounded before the ribs are fixed. I use file [No. 6], half round, flat side to the wood first, turning to the round side for finish. When at the corners, I employ knife [No. 8] in cutting where the file would not do it so well in the early stage, and this file not at all nicely for finish, so I employ a smaller one, [No. 9], to these corners, the other all over the rest of the wood, cleanly doing the work so that about one-sixteenth only of the inner edge is rounded off. Then No. 1 sandpaper is used to finish off the work done, and the next stage is glueing on the end blocks, preparatory to fixing the ribs as they get made—of which, later.

So, for the present, I leave the back, and take up the wood you will remember I selected for the front table, or belly, and devote to it a separate section; merely adding that in the course of my work I have so arranged all the thicknesses of the back that it answers to the tone C, which do not forget, as I shall have again to refer to it.

CHAPTER VII.

THE BELLY.

This is the soundboard of the instrument—that which, I suppose, vibrates as fourteen to ten as compared with the back—that is to say, it is recorded that, given equal conditions, such will be the case. It is that which first receives concussion as the bow strikes the strings, which shock travels down the upper surface of the gut from the bridge until the nut at the end of the fingerboard be reached, when it flies under the said string to the bridge again, which communicates the shock to the belly, the belly to the back by soundpost, ribs, neck, scroll, and all about it, to the mass of air in the body of the violin, when comes what we call tone, and rightly do we call it so, if pure vibrations have been brought into play, otherwise noise would be a much safer word to use. Of course, I give you the above in detail: it will appear to you as though the whole of the agitations were simultaneous, such is the amazing rapidity with which all this takes place. And I only give it to show you how incumbent it is upon you to use every care in all you do when engaged in this work, more especially that on the upper table. For no matter how well your back may be gauged, finished, and finally adjusted; or your ribs, how equally balanced one with another or in relative proportions with the whole: if your tell-tale soundboard be defectively wrought, cheeks too much hollowed, or the thicknesses carelessly seen to, there will be beats in your tone, strings irregular, weak notes and strong ones, and a general unsatisfactory result which could easily have been avoided.