Purfling is decorative inlay. On violins it is the little black and white line that runs around the edge of the top and the back. Purfling is made from three pieces of wood sandwiched together to make a black-white-black pattern. A very small channel is cut parallel to the edge of the instrument and the purfling is glued into this.

Materials for purfling vary widely among makers and can be a useful way to identify older instruments. Stradivari, and most everyone in Cremona, used pearwood that was dyed black for the two outer strips and poplar for the white center strip. German makers tended to use maple for both black and white. Some French makers used ebony for the blacks, as it does not need any dying, but ebony is notoriously brittle and hard to bend into shape. Sometimes materials other than wood were used, such as the Testore family, who apparently used corn husks or some kind of paper, or the Dutch school of violin makers who used whale baleen. One Roman maker even used silver for his “blacks”.

I make my purfling with pearwood and poplar. The traditional way to make purfling is by making one large plane shaving off the edge of a board. With this method I can get a very consistent shaving thickness or I can vary the thickness slightly. It depends on the maker’s style I am trying to copy. Getting the thicker shavings needed for cello purfling is a lot of work for one person. At Oberlin we experimented with having several people on one plane-one on the front pulling with a rope, one steering in the middle and one pushing from the back.

I dye the pearwood black with Logwood, Haematoxylum campechianum, using a traditional recipe. The Logwood actually dyes the shavings a very deep purple. After soaking in the Logwood solution, I lock in the color and turn them black with a small amount of ferrous sulphate, a chemical used for centuries in ink manufacture.

After gluing the shavings together between two boards, I cut 3mm strips from the side of the “sandwich”. These are the strips I will turn on their side and inlay into the instrument’s edge.

Purlfing highlights the outline of the instrument and adds style to the corners. Each maker handles how the purfling is inlaid slightly differently.

This way of clamping with string and a dowel is very simple, it applies plenty of clamping pressure to the glue joint and it is light weight.

I was introduced to this way of clamping ribs to the blocks by Joe Grubaugh at Oberlin this year. I was amazed. The way I was taught to clamp ribs at violin making school was with metal clamps and cork lined counter parts. I was taught to build my rib structures on a flat piece of glass as well. This way is very precise, and not the way the italian masters built their ribs.

In the Museo Stradivariano in Cremona, Italy there are several surviving forms from the Stradivari workshop, as well as wooden dowels and counterparts. We can assume that this is how Stradivari, and most likely the other makers in Cremona, clamped his ribs.

When making a violin in a particular makers style it is extremely important to try and understand how that maker worked. I am a firm believer that the stylistic development of any maker is founded on their tools and how they worked with them. In as much as I can, I try to return to those methods in an attempt to get similar results.

Here is a video of the knot I use to tie the ribs to the form.

Bridges are a very important piece of the the violin family instruments. Bridges allow the vibrations from the strings to be transferred to the large resonating body of the instrument. They also hold the strings away from the fingerboard at the proper height for playing. Bridges are made from maple with very tight annual growth rings. The best bridgewood grows high in the mountains where the winters are long. The wood for bridges comes to violin-makers as “bridge blanks” with some of the intricate carving started. This is to save time, but carving a bridge is still very labor intensive because every surface must be worked to its final shape.

Paramount to the function of the bridge is how well it fits with the top. The “feet” of the bridge must conform exactly  to the shape of the top, which can be complicated on some older instruments. This is achieved by putting a light coating of some colored substance on the top in the area of the bridge feet (some people use carbon paper, or graphite, I use a red watercolor pencil) and then placing the bridge on the top. Wherever I see color the feet are making contact. I remove the high spots with a sharp knife and mark again. When I see color everywhere the job is done.

Because all the  sound from the strings travels through the bridge it has a profound affect on the final tone of an instrument. It’s almost like a filter or an effect peddle on an electric instrument. Like everything on the violin the bridge must be light and strong. It must have just the right amount of flexibility. The basic structure of a bridge is a “X”. One can remove wood from all around this “X” and still retain a large amount of it’s strength. We call the cut-out in the middle the “heart” and the two holes on either side the kidneys. How much wood you remove affects the weight of the bridge and also the stiffness. Where you remove the wood from also affects the stiffness.

In addition to its technical duties, a bridge must be beautiful. Every maker or shop has their own subtle style to how they carve a bridge. When it is done well a bridge can last decades. There are many fine old bridges from the Hill shop still floating around.

Almost all violins are made of maple and spruce. Spruce is used for the front of the instrument because it is light and strong and transmits the vibrations of the strings very well. Maple is used for the back, ribs and neck because it is stable, strong and beautiful. For some of the larger instruments, like violas and cellos, sometimes softer woods like poplar and willow are used for the back and ribs. Spruce from Italy (Picea abies) is highly prized by violin makers, as is Bosnian maple (Acer pseudoplatanus). I also use Engelmann Spruce (Picea engelmanni) from Canada.

I buy most of my wood from dealers who specialize in violin wood. Some of these dealers do the cutting themselves, and some of them import the wood from Europe. Dealers travel all around the country visiting violin makers and a few times a year one will pull up to my shop with a van full of wood. This is a good way to buy a few pieces at a time. When ordering a large quantity, such as an entire log, it can be helpful to travel directly to the wood cutters and have first choice of their best wood.

Selecting wood is mostly intuition and part science. I have to rely on my senses. The first impression I get from a piece of wood is the weight, I want just the right weight- definitely not too heavy but also not too light. It has to be cut well so that the grain is running straight through the piece. Sometimes I press my fingernail against the grain lines to gauge the hardness. I want it to have a certain crisp quality. How fine are the annual growth rings? I then check to see if I like the look of it. I may look through a hundred pieces of wood to find two that I like.

Then there is the question of how old the wood is. There is a certain fascination with old wood. Other woodworkers are only concerned with the moisture content of the wood, but wood goes through other changes as it ages. In spruce the resin in the wood will harden and crystallize as it ages, perhaps enhancing tone quality. Some dealers will tell you that the wood is old, but there is no real test to verify that claim. We do know that the old Italian masters were not overly concerned with old wood. Many of Del Gesu’s instruments were made with fairly fresh wood. Personally, I use wood that is at least 4-5 years old. I feel that this is enough time to dry and age, but I use older wood when I have it.

This week I have been working on making new models, or patterns that I base my instruments on. I have decided to make a quartet of Guarneri instruments. The cello will be a Joseph Guarneri ‘Filius Andrea’, the viola an Andrea Guarneri, and the two violins will be in the style of Joseph Guarneri ‘Del Jesu’. I thought it would be interesting to see how the family style progressed, from the grandfather to the father to the son. I have never made four instruments together with the intention of them being a cohesive whole before and the prospect is exciting.

Making a new model is somewhat of an event for most violinmakers. Most violinmakers have a few models they make, usually a couple of instruments based on different makers and perhaps models varying in size for instance- a 16” inch viola and a 16 1/2” or 17″ inch model. This is very traditional, probably because musicians still come in all sizes today as in Stradivari’s time. Makers need to work with players to find an instrument that works for their body and playing style, so having a few arrows in your quiver is appropriate.

Once you pick the model you wish to make, there are many decisions that still need to be made. Will you copy the asymmetry of the particular instrument? Is this an aberration or was this a consistent feature of the makers style? What about measurements, will you redesign the instrument to fit “normal” standards of string length and body size? These and a hundred other details all need to be carefully considered before the work can begin in earnest.

So I make visits to the local copy shop with tracings of instrument outlines and ruler in hand and try to explain to them that a difference in size of 1/8” just will not fly. From the very accurate copies I make templates by hand out of plastic. ( I use plastic because I can shape it with my woodworking tools and it is fairly dimensionally stable over time.) Then I will use the templates to make the mold that the ribs will be bent around. Once this process is finished I will be able to use these templates and forms for years. One good reason for going to all the trouble of making them perfect.

Amid all the details, I am excited about this quartet. I have picked the wood that will become the instruments, with an eye for how they will go together. This wood is spectacular, three of the four instruments will have one-piece backs. Sometime soon I will get to dive into the real work and trade in my plastic dust for wood shavings.

I have returned from the Violin Society of America’s Violin Making workshop in Oberlin, Ohio. I feel like I am just settling back into my normal routine. The workshop is a unique experience. About 40 professional makers from around the world come together to learn from each other and work side-by-side for two weeks. Each year there is a topic that we focus on and each year we make a group instrument. Chris Germain directs the workshop and thinks of it as graduate school for violin-makers. There are a few people who give lectures and some who manage the progress of the group instrument, but we are all teachers and students.

The Oberlin workshop was founded on the idea that if we all share our knowledge we are all to benefit.  It was a real honor to be selected to go to the workshop. After my first experience last year I was very excited to attend again this year. The focus this year was cellos. Specifically, we made a copy of the Joseph Guarneri filius Andrea 1692 cello that currently resides in the Royal Academy Museum in London. Some people had access to the original in the past and they brought tracings of the outlines and arches as well reams of pictures of the instrument. Though we couldn’t get the Royal Academy to loan us the cello for the workshop, we did have an Andrea Guarneri cello from the same time period that was available for study for the two weeks.

We all arrived with suitcases full of wood and tools. The Oberlin college makes their sculpture studio open to us and we transform it into our workshop. We set up benches in the center in groups of three or four and people also work at a long bench that runs the length of the room by the window. People are open and friendly, since some of us have travelled very far we cannot bring all of the things we are used to having in our own shops so people are always borrowing tools from others. The group cooks meals together and most of us sleep in the dorms provided by the school. But everyone settles into their own rhythm. Some are early risers and some work late into the hours of the morning. I tried to be working by 7:30 am and I made myself go to bed at 1:00 am. I was in heaven. It’s wonderful because, truth be told, all violin-makers are just a bit crazy but at least in Oberlin we are all the same kind of crazy.  By the end of the two weeks we had made a cello in the white (no small task- even for forty people) and next year we will varnish it together. I made tremendous progress on my own cello as well and got some great feedback on my work.

After the blocks have been glued to the mold I shape them to the right curve to match the model I am making. The shape of the blocks defines the shape of the corners on the top and back, so I am careful to get the shape that will give me the look that I want.

Ribs are the only part of the instrument that are bent. The top and back plates, for instance, are carved out of thick pieces of wood. In the cellular structure of all trees there is a component called lignin, which adds strength and plays a crucial part in conducting water through the tree. When the lignin is heated it will become pliable and easy to bend. When the lignin cools it will retain the form it was bent into. Usually wood to be bent is heated with direct heat or hot steam or water. I use a bending iron to bend wood. It is a large piece of metal, usually non-ferrous so there is no issue with rust, shaped to roughly the curve of the ribs and heated from the inside with heating elements. The heating elements are controlled by an adjustable thermostat. In 16th century Italy the bending irons were heated on an open fire, I can imagine bending ribs that way would be exciting. In fact many classic instruments have scorch marks on them from bending irons left to long in the fire. If the iron is not hot enough the ribs are more likely to crack as they are bent.

When the c-bout ribs are bent to match the mold and the blocks I glue them in with a counter part to apply even pressure.

When the glue has dried I carve the outer curve of the corner blocks and the surface of the neck and tail blocks to their final shape. The ends of the c-bout ribs taper to almost nothing at the tip to hide the glue joint on the rib corners.

Usually the upper rib is one piece (though when the neck is attached to the body the upper rib is cut through), sometimes the lower rib is two pieces with a joint in the middle of the tail block. This is because wood that is cut for violins and cellos is usually just a bit to short to cut the entire lower bout off of the back. When I can I  like to use a one-piece lower rib because it is just one less joint to fit. It’s also traditional. When I find a nice piece of rib stock that is long enough I may use the wood on several instruments.

When I have the upper and lower ribs bent to shape I glue them to the blocks again with counter-forms.

The main part of the rib structure is now done. The ribs at this point are still fragile, next I will glue on the linings to add strength and a good glueing surface for the top and back.

I am varnishing the cello we’ve been following right now. This ends up giving me a bit of time in between coats to work on other things. So, I have started the next cello. More about varnish later.

Ribs are the sides of the instrument. They are what gives the air volume to a cello’s resonating body. The height of the ribs has a big affect on the sound of the instrument, for this reason. Ribs are very thin, cello ribs being about 1.5-1.7 mm thick and violin ribs being around 1 mm thick (1 mm is about the thickness of ten sheets of copier paper). Cello ribs in particular take a lot of abuse over the life of an instrument. It’s quite common to see old cellos with many rib cracks, in fact I worked on a cello that had 100 rib cracks, I counted. I spent a couple of months just cleaning and gluing all of them. All of the parts of the body of an instrument are relatively thin and fragile on their own but the violin is an amazing structure because when you put the component parts together they are very strong.

I start making a rib structure with a mold. A mold is a form that provides shape to the rib structure until it is done. Molds can be used over and over, in fact we still have some of the molds from the Stradivari workshop that have survived. My mold is plywood because it is light and stable and I drill holes in it to make it lighter still.

There are six blocks in an instrument; one at each of the four corners, one for the neck to attach to and one at the endpin. In this case I am using willow for my blocks, but many types of wood can be used. It seems like classic makers used whatever was light ,strong and handy. The blocks are squared up and spot glued to the mold, so they will stay put but be able to be released later.

Then I thickness the ribs. I cut them close to thickness with a bandsaw and then I plane then down to thickness by hand. I use a block plane with a toothed blade in it. A toothed blade is less likely to tear out the flames on the maple.

When the ribs are very close to thickness I finish them with a cabinet scraper to remove the grooves left from the toothed blade. Sometimes I choose to leave a bit of the texture from the plane, as I have seen this on a few old instruments and I like the look if it’s subtle.

Madder root is a traditional material used for dyeing. Madder root has been used by people for thousands of years, most famously perhaps to dye Turkish carpets their distinctive red. The plants grew originally in what is now Afghanistan and now have been spread and cultivated all over the world. Producing madder was a huge industry, with families making the pigment and passing down the traditions from generation to generation. Madder red was so valuable and sought after that when a red article dyed with madder was worn out, the cloth was dissolved and the color extracted to dye a new piece of clothing. Madder pigment would have been accessible to Stradivari, Guarneri and other artisans of the 18th century certainly. In the late 19th century a process was developed whereby the principal chemical component of madder root could be synthesized. Alizarin, which was cheaper to manufacture, was the cause of the rapid collapse of the madder root market. But alizarin is not the only component of madder, purpurin is the other chemical component which has never been synthesized. Discerning eyes can see the difference between real madder which is a complex color and alizarin which is somewhat flat.

Many violinmakers today use pigments to color their varnish, and there is historical evidence to support that classic makers did the same. I make my own pigment, starting with the raw roots of the madder plant. It is an incredibly time-consuming and labor intensive process. For each kilogram of roots that I start with I get roughly 30 grams of pigment by the end, a 3% yield. I use around 25-30 grams of pigment of a single cello. Each batch takes 3-5 months to complete the process.

I choose to make my own varnish and pigments because I want the highest quality materials I can obtain. When I make pigment it is with the aim of crafting a small amount of the most transparent and rich color possible. I also enjoy that because I make the color myself it gives my instruments a distinctive look. In a business where it can be hard to distinguish yourself from the crowd varnish is the most visible signature available. I also enjoy the process. It has been fun calling on my chemist friends and asking them obscure questions about how to recreate a 16th century process today.

After I have completed the pigment it is stored as a powder. The powder must then be ground into the finest particles possible  and then added to my varnish for each coat. To grind the pigment I use a glass muller and a flat glass plate.   

One of the classic ways to color the wood is with sunlight. Violin makers would hang the “white” instruments in the sun for up to six months, or so I’m told. I use a UV cabinet or “light box” to color my instruments. The florescent bulbs produce ultraviolet light which oxidizes the outside of the wood, coloring it. I also use the light box to dry my varnish. The top picture is of two scrolls, one that has been in the light box for a week and the other which is just white wood. 

After I have achieved the color I want, I then seal the wood with a mixture of varnish and fine particulate matter, like pumice, to fill the wood pores and sap pockets. I rub it on in small areas, trying to seal the wood with the least penetration into it. 

I tried a slightly different technique on my last two instruments and it was such a success I am trying it again. Most makers will attach the neck into the body before they varnish, that is the method I learned in school. But there are some problems that arise with that. To be able to varnish under the fingerboard you have to remove and re-glue the fingerboard to the neck after varnishing, and the neck can move in different ways that can be problematic, even slight variations in the neck angle can present challenges. One possible solution is to  varnish with the neck detached from the body, and attach the neck later.  That way the fingerboard stays glued to the neck, and the neck stays exactly where you set it. The one drawback to this is that you must touch up the neck heel to match the rest of the instrument. It becomes more like a neck-set repair to an old instrument. I have been very pleased with the results so far. That is why you see the neck and body hanging separately in the light box.