Violin Forum/Message Board

larryd · Junior Member Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 3

I have just about all of the violin making books available, most which have been mentioned in various posts here. I have the Strobel books and plans, Wake books, and Johnson and Courtnall. In regards to neck templates, at this point the best samples seem to be the Strobel drawing and the drawing in the Johnson and Courtnall book.
After searching this site for neck info, I found a few things about various measurements, but no direct samples of template making. I searched the internet for ready made templates and only found the plastic one that all violin making parts suppliers seem to have....which I have purchased all ready myself, and as far as I am concerned is useless, I am wondering how experienced makers deal with making their metal templates for the various Strad poster models they use as reference. I've seen one of these on Michael Darnton's site I believe...and in the Strobel book. I hope to use Strad posters for a Stradivari model and Del Gesu model, but the neck information on these posters seem to only cover the scroll. There is no complete neck drawing. Would you fellows that are professional makers, or others of you that have made a number of violins by now, be willing to suggest a method of making a neck template for a particular Strad poster that you might be interested in?
One idea that I am considering is taking the Johnson and Courtnall drawing and using the basic neck as the template for any particular model from the root to the nut and attaching the Scroll head design for any particular Strad poster model I might want to emulate. What are the thoughts of others? I am returning to learning violin making after a 10 year layoff and having started a violin 10 years back that needs to be finished. I see several mistakes I made with that one and hope to get better organized before starting a new one.

rs · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:40 am Post subject:

Here is what I do. I view anything south of the nut as pretty much mechanical and hence all the same, that is, the root angle is basically always the same as is the distance nut to root and the neck and heel thicknesses, (that is, for "standard" instruments). Besides, these when cut out are slightly overcut anyway. The only crucial layout starts north of the nut, the box, holes, scroll.

I use a metal template when I make mine. I find a head I want to make, sketch it, and sketch it again. I started this technique about three years ago and it was a tremendous boost to me; a vast improvement to earlier approaches. I then take a life sized sketch I have done, photo copy it, cut it out and tape it to a sheet of aluminum flashing material. (If you are not comfortable with the sketching, you can always make a photocopy from the poster and use the photocopied life-sized photograph instead). I scribe through the tape, drill the holes for the scroll and pegs. I scribe the nut line and then take a previous neck pattern I have made, line it up with the nut line and scribe a transfer to the new pattern I am making for all the work south of the nut. I then cut the pattern out with a pair of scissors.

The crucial reference point is the nut location as this is the cornerstone of the neck. I start all work from this starting point both in the patterns and when I cut, dress and fit the neck.

I am now finishing a 1666 Amati manner for a client. The pattern given me to copy was from a Strad poster from the 90's. I did not care for the head on this poster instrument for copying but preferred one I had seen on a 1683 Amati. I sketched it several times until I was comfortable with it and made it according to what I described above.

There are alot of ways to do this, but this works the best for me.
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Randall Shenefelt

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 9:54 am Post subject:

What I do is take a life-size photo of the head I want to copy, and superglue it to a piece of formica. Then for the part below the nut, I draft out a rough saw line, not a final one. The key components are that the nut/board intersection is about 1-2mm below the lowest part of the back of the head, then it's 136.5mm from there to the bottom of the heel at the front. The bottom of the heel is an 87 degree angle from the front of the neck, back at least 6mm (overstand) + 4mm (top thickness) + 30mm (rib height) + 4mm (back thickness) = 44mm.

I include the thickness of the back into the length of the heel for two reasons. First, it gives working room at the back when you're setting the neck. Second, that allows you to mark out the width of the neck heel at the back to exactly the width you want your button to be, so that the neck heel width flows properly to the button width.

Then I come up from the bottom of the heel 9mm for the depth of the mortise at the back + the distance of the back's overhang + the height of the button (about 17mm) + some room for comfort over the theoretical button (I allow 2mm), or about 22mm. The rough thickness of the neck is 15mm, and I make a gentle curve to the back of the scroll with a quarter as a template, and draw in the approximate heel line at the bottom, more gentle than final to allow for later shaping after the neck is in place.

You can saw formica on a bandsaw, and file or sand it to the line. I drill a spiral of 1.5mm holes in the photo to mark out the spiral of the scroll with a marking point on the wood right through the template.
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rs · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:35 am Post subject:

Formica sounds like a better idea than aluminum. Thanks. Next time!
_________________
Randall Shenefelt

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:42 am Post subject:

The nice thing about formica is that you can go to the waste bin in a cabinet shop and get enough of what is scrap to them to use in a lifetime of violin making.
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larryd · Junior Member Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 3

Thank you rs and Michael for your replies. Your ideas and information are appreciated. After making my first post to start this topic, I started looking for some of my other plans and books that I had bought by Edward Heron-Allen and H. E. Brown and I noticed that the neck templates they had on their plans seemed to agree with the basic things you fellows said about the neck area between the nut and body of the violin. One thing I did notice about the plan from the Heron-Allen book was that it appears to be the one the person used to make the widely available plastic template that does not have a straight line on the fingerboard edge. At least on mine, the end near the root curves up. The drawing on the plan does the same thing.
I'm not sure if I understood your statement Michael about the "nut/board intersection is about 1-2mm below the lowest part of the back of the head". Were you trying to say that if the fingerboard plane were extended backward towards the scroll head that the scroll head should be angled down at least 1-2mm below this imaginary line? At least that is the idea presented in the Johnson-Courtnall book so that any future plane work that might have to be done to the neck would not be interferred with by hitting the scroll. If this is what you meant, I assume you were saying if I were to use just the scroll head from a strad poster to superimpose onto the neck "standard" from nut forward, I should make sure that the scroll head did not come above the imaginary extended line from the fingerboard side of the neck.
Also on page 187 there is a picture of a direct view of the neck root that seems to depict your description of how you proceed. Then as I understood you, one should leave a little extra wood (22mm) on the back side of the root, underside of neck and at the pegbox end curve for final carving.
After looking at several different sources, it appears that neck root degree angles have varied from 83.5 (Strobel), 85 degree (Johnson-Courtnall, to the 87 degree that you gave which is also on a website for violin specs that was mentioned in another topic here and is also the angle that Prier uses in his Violin DVD. What is the theory of these various neck angles since the other measurements seem to all agree working from the nut forward?[/quote]

Michael Darnton · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:58 am Post subject:

That's a point, too, that the board should rest on a slight platform above the level of the scroll, so you don't plane the front of the head off fitting a new board some day, but what I was referring to was sliding the board south just a bit to allow the thumb to have 2mm of extra clearance at the back before it bumps into the back of the head at the bottom.

83 degrees is a bad idea that puts the mortise parallel with the top of the ribs, and not very deep. 87 degrees adjusts things so that when you rest the neck on the uncut mortise area, resting on the uncut edge of the top, the neck is at the correct angle. Then when the neck is set, the back of the mortise, where you need strength, is 2.5mm deeper than the front. This is the way that almost all good restoration shops do it, so that all of the pull of the strings isn't concentrated on just the button. I suspect that 85 degrees is just a bad attempt at compromise by someone who didn't understand the issues.
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rs · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 12:55 pm Post subject:

87 degrees is a good idea for new work, I see. I had always assumed (falsely I conclude) that the reason the 87 degree or so approach to re-fit necks was to clear out any fissured wood and give a little more "new" wood to work with. 87 degree sounds to me as a faster layout and eliminates the anxiety I have of the broken button down the road. My next neck I am going to open up to this angle.

Thanks for the advice.
_________________
Randall Shenefelt

DonLeister · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:25 pm Post subject:

I usually use spruce for blocks so when it's time to mortice the neck the 87 degree angle also helps keep the spruce from splitting out as I'm fitting the neck.
It helps though if I check the block for runnout before I glue it in of course!

violinarius · Member Joined: 14 Dec 2007 Posts: 171

rs · Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:18 am Post subject:

Violinarius, your points are well taken. Thanks, also, for the calculations. The advantage with the deeper mortise, I suppose, is the heel is attached to more wood INSIDE the purfling. I cannot recall ever seeing a button fracture that did not involve a purfling failure south of the button. By getting more neck block onto the back south of the purfling, I would expect to see fewer button failures.

All the best.
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Randall Shenefelt