This is a follow up to the Dimpled Viola project and develops some of the ideas sparked by that project. With the viola I made an instrument that made a feature of the gouge work that appears in early stages of carving an instrument but that normally gets completely...
In the first part of this study I constructed a viola emphasizing a part of the construction process, the carving, which is visually very interesting but that most players never get to see. In this second part, I consider the surface finish and explore the decorative...
Finishing the guitar was pretty much a pain and took way longer than I expected. At first I was going to use violin varnish which I'm more familiar with, but having gone so far down the "conventional guitar" road, I felt I should go all the way. Unlike violins,...
A study of violin aesthetics This is another project that approaches violin making from a slightly different angle in hope of gaining a deeper understanding of the craft. This study is concerned with the visual rather than the functional side of violinmaking, though...
My father was a sculptor who worked in everything from marble and bronze to sintered sand and telegraph poles. in some of his wood carving he used similar techniques to some that I've ended up using in violin making. Whereas I would be obliged to lose all traces of...
Luthierie in the time of Covid With the arrival of Corona Virus I realized that business would be slow for a while so I decided to take a little time out for some of the violin related projects that I could never quite find the time for. The idea of making myself...
My introduction to Luthierie The first instrument I made was a steel string guitar. I'd seen someone in my Industrial Design course in college make a guitar and I thought it was the coolest thing. A couple of years later, I'd moved to Berkeley, California. I had my...
Guitars and fiddles have a lot of similarities and some major differences. Comparing the two is an interesting exercise which sheds some light on how each instrument works. Stringed instrument building is essentially concerned with two things:
Talking with Master Fiddler Brandon Godman some months ago, he asked me if I’d ever made a five string fiddle. I never had but I was intrigued. There are five string cellos and five string…..
Because I offer several different cello models, one of the most frequent questions that I get is "what is the difference between them?". Recently I had a client visit with exactly that question and, as I happened to have three different models on...