Violin Forum/Message Board

[rs]

These are two violins I have recently finished. They are each from the same form, The Messiah Strad (1716). The first one pictured made in the style of The Hellier of 1679 and is the one I posted when I was working on it.

The corpse is 354 mm for each. (Stradivari's Hellier was a big one at about 358 mm). The long arch I chose is the same for each as well, a 930 mm radius. I have with these two also abandoned the use of templates for the arches and instead, constructed a series of different radii cycloids for all the curves. This means the scoops are cut to meet the cycloids instead of my past customary practice of following a serpentine template. Each one has been set-up for over two months and the results to date are violins with much more depth of tone than my previous ones (not bass, depth from bass to treble) Needless to say, I am greatly indebted to Michael Darnton's contribution on this subject.


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The red one below has more texture than the one with the Hellier motif as can be seen in the final photographs.


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I spent a lot of time this year trying to improve the texture in my instruments. The back is French polished and rubbed with micromesh of 3200 to 8000 grit. It is then blended into the scoops and corners. In this way, the smoother finish augments the texture in the rest of the instrument. By rubbing out the French polish, I avoided rubbing away the original varnish, a problem that I had in earlier instruments.
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Randall Shenefelt

[actonern]

I've often wondered how hard the "Hellier" would be to copy.

Can you tell us a bit about the rib inlay?

Wonderful effort!

[DonLeister]

Yes, nice work Paco! I have always liked that inlay around the purfling that Stradivari designed. Is it oil varnish?

[Mikes]

Paco, Wow very impressive and wonderful work! As a craftsman how can one not aspire to do this kind of work at some point in ones career and it's great to see it posted, very very nice! Thanks for sharing and quite a visual treat.
Best,
Mike S

[MANFIO]

Nice work Paco! Congrats!!!
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www.manfio.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7875988@N02/with/464604020/

[kjb]

very nice thanks for sharing your work..

[rs]

Thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate them.

The varnish is oil. I French polished both backs.

The rib inlay is ground ebony and hide glue. I used small gouges and knives to shape the grooves, filled them with the ebony/glue mixture and went to town with a scraper. I bent the ribs with dry heat and no water at all for obvious reasons, although I did try a little water in my first attempts. The ebony was made with a rasp over an old board over a sheet of paper. Looking at the photographs of the Hellier, it appears to me that AS possibly used lampblack to color it as the photographs have a brown cast to the inlay to me, but I am not convinced of that either.

The purfling is the same mixture described above filling the voids between the mother of pearl footballs, toothpick dowels and purfling borders. The mother of pearl started off white and changed to blue when inlaid. I embraced the look and ended up liking the blue cast. To enhance it, I scraped the varnish off each football as the varnish made them appear dirty. AS used ivory so I intend to try either bone or white holly next time. The two biggest difficulties I encountered with the purfling were the corners and the scoops. The mother of pearl was too hard to scrape, so I had to grind each one with a dremel grinder and then tediously rub with different grits of sandpaper. The close-up of the back C shows the slight waviness in the purfling as a result. Bone would do the same thing, I fear, so my selection for the next one is white holly.

The pegs and pin for the Hellier motif are made of ebony, boxwood and gold leaf. I scored the ebony, brushed white shellac on the scores, waited about one minute, put the gold leaf on pounding it into the grooves with the bristles of an old toothbrush, waited about 20 minutes and then went over it with various grades of micromesh to remove the leaf from the high spots.
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Randall Shenefelt