The #1 Luthier Skill You NEED

Sharpening scrapers, gouges, chisels, and planes!

I hate to break it to you, but you really can't do much luthier work without learning to sharpen tools.

You just gotta set aside a few hours, get on YouTube, and find a method that works for you.

You don't need a $200 Japanese whetstone to start, truly. Sandpaper will do if nothing else. Here I've got an old file and an old oil stone.

It took me a few tries, but I think I got the hang of it now!

New old luthier tools

New tools, new projects!

We inherited some old family tools. Some of them are perfect for violin-making! What a delight.

Some new projects are in the works. This time I'm more focused on collecting the proper tools and materials before attempting the tasks I have in mind.

What are your favorite tool sources? Antique stores are a good source of planes, for example.

Finished Octave Violin

 It is finished!

At least, it is finished until I mess with it some more. Normal people, if they aren't satisfied with their sound, practice more. I tend to get out the Exacto knives and chip away at something.

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It could stand another few coats of varnish.

It is so easy to play, and so much fun -- that much bass power under the chin is likely to go to one's head! I tried it as a viola and didn't like it nearly as well; besides, it didn't seem worth learning a whole new clef just to go one string deeper.

In time, I will fit the rosewood pegs from the fitting set. The chinrest needs some tweaking to be comfortable, though, so I'm playing it bare.

The only issue is a certain buzz at several frequencies. I am going to diligently ignore it for now, because I suspect it is a loose lining because I mixed my glue too weakly when gluing up the body. One day I will therefore have to open up the body and figure it out. Today is not that day. Today it's time to play!

Bridges and Resonance

Experimenting on bridges is fun and relatively inexpensive. Soundpost placement is the other spot you can really alter the sound of your instrument in an easily-reversible way, but soundposts are quite annoying so you need to be fairly motivated to do this. Bridges are prettier, too.

For directions, read Michael Darnton's bridge-fitting section, in the Setup chapter, and makingtheviolin.com has some good basics as well.

As a disclaimer, you probably won't have too much luck going crazily experimental on a standard violin bridge. More resonance, I have discovered, is not automatically better, and the standard is standard for a reason. That being said, most bridges are poorly fitted and very far from the correct spec and you can vastly improve your sound by buying a couple blanks and making well-fitted feet and the correct string angle and lowering or raising the action to your taste.

For an octave violin, this is not the case, since nothing else is standard. My theory is that this instrument needs all the help it can get to resonate those big notes on such a small body. I made a fairly standard bridge and a very open bridge to compare.

The open bridge was much louder and more responsive than the standard one. It is a huge improvement -- from not-really-playable-in-public to useful as a performance instrument. I can't recommend it enough. Besides, it looks cool.

Fingerboard

My fingerboard (the one with the kit) came pretty close to spec already; the nut came as a blank rectangle of ebony. I basically just followed the instructions for the nut and fingerboard on makingtheviolin.com, but to viola size.

To minimize buzzing possibilities with those big bass strings I hope to fit, I trimmed the end in a curve mirroring the compensated tailpiece I have ordered. The jigsaw actually worked nicely for this, with minimal chipping. There was a little splitting on the exiting edge. In retrospect, it might have helped to clamp some scrap wood flush with the edge for a cleaner result. However, I am, overall, pleased with it. It is rather decorative, at least.




After gluing on the fingerboard and nut, after varnishing the violin, I scraped and sanded the fingerboard and neck perfectly flush and smooth with each other. Since I have small hands I enjoy a very slender neck. I sanded with very fine sandpaper and burnished it all with leather.

If your instrument color is dark, you will probably want to stain the exposed neck with coffee because the naked maple is a little too much raw contrast with a brown stain. But since my instrument is so light, the natural maple seems right.

Inter-Library Loan and violin books

Violin books can be scandalously expensive. However, remember that inter-library loan is a thing. The librarians at our military post library are so great -- in addition to knowing all my kids' names and handing out noisemaker toys in the summer reading program (did your librarian ever give your kids a cowbell? I think not) -- they got pretty excited for the chance track down rare books.

These are the books on my hunting list:

Making a Simple Violin and Viola by Ronald Robertson. (This is a specialty book about trapezoidal instruments.)

The Art of Violin making by Chris Johnson and Roy Courtnall.

Violin making step by step Henry Strobel.

Violin-Making a practical guide by Juliet Barker (This one is really cheap enough to buy -- $20 used on Amazon right now.)

Toddler Cello Strings/ Octave Violin test

When my 1/8 cello strings came in the mail, I was so excited I spent the evening testing them on my regular violin. It is an unusually poor candidate for an octave violin setup because the neck is sunken, but I was interested in a benchmark to measure the effect of my changes to the standard, which are numerous although individually small in degree.

There are purpose-built octave strings (Sensicore Octave sold by Southwest Strings) but they are about $50 - and the C string if you want to go full chin cello is $20 by itself. Steep for an experiment. I found Prelude 1/8 cello strings on eBay for $9 from someone who didn't mean to order toddler size cello strings. A 1/8 cello is bigger than a violin, but for that price I figured I could make it work.

Right off the bat, there were mechanical difficulties in winding such a fat gauge of string. I had to trim off 8 inches or so of string - all the winding. I used viola fine tuners because violin ones can't fit that diameter of loop, and bored out the string hole on a new peg significantly. My normal pegbox was not deep enough to accommodate the gauge of the C-string at all. Even the octave G was tough to wind in such a tight radius.  It did not want to bend enough grip the tiny peg.

However, at last I fudged it enough to play a bit.

My flimsy light bow did eke out some sound, but I definitely want a viola or cello bow with some black hair and very sticky rosin. It was a lot of work to get a wispy sound out.

The vibrations to the chin were indeed strong. However, I rarely play more than a half hour at a stretch, and not continuously at that. I'm a lightweight.

The sound was very interesting. I can see why one maker called his octave a "grizzly". You know how a lion's roar has a staccato quality, like you are hearing each individual wavelength peak, rather than one smooth sound? I am not sure how to describe that although there is surely a scientific term for the phenomenon. This shared that growly quality.

Also, the pitch varied significantly with bow pressure. You can force a violin to do this a little -- mash the bow and hear a little rev in the engine. But this was present, to large degree, with every stroke unless I worked hard to keep it artificially even in pressure -- thus the useable length of the bow is short since the tip is too light completely, too great of a contrast. Hopefully a cello bow will reduce this effect or it will be annoying to impossible to play without going off-key.

The bar is set pretty low -- my viola can only be better! If it isn't, I can just string it as a viola.