Arching, channelling and edgework

TRADE SECRETS

Makers reveal their special techniques

BY ANTOINE NÉDÉLEC

Director of the Chicago School of Violin Making, Chicago, IL, US

Ever since violin making school, I approached arching and channelling as different stages of the making process. I used to do the rough arching with a gouge first, then use thumb planes to get closer to the final result, then carve a channel with gouges, and finally blend the channel and arch with thumb planes again. It always felt too disjointed, with too many steps, but it got decent results and I felt comfortable doing it that way. Or, to be honest, I was scared of trying something new and messing up an instrument. I finally summoned up the courage to use a different method on a viola.

There is no viola joke here. Since violas are less standardised than violins, they afford much more freedom to makers. This means I can pretend that whatever I end up with is exactly what I meant to do in the first place. On this instrument, based on a c.1620 Brothers Amati, I approached shaping the plates as a single step, arching and channelling at the same time with a big gouge, and then moving to the smaller tools (thumb planes and scrapers) only for the finishing touches.

Marking the edge

1 At this point the plates have been sawn close to the finished outline. Using a marking gauge I scribe a line about 0.5mm proud of my final edge thickness.

Rough arching

ALL PHOTOS ANTOINE NÉDÉLEC

2 With an arching gouge, I create the arch and the channelling at the same time. The channel goes all the way to the edge; there is no platform. I bring the edge down close to the scribed line.

The gouged back

3 I gouge the arch and channel crosswise. In the C-bouts, one should avoid creating too much recurve and placing the deepest point of the channel too far in. On this viola I was taking my inspiration from the Brothers Amati so I wasn’t too shy about the recurve.

4a Drilling

4b Eliminating the drill holes

4 I don’t like measuring constantly; I find it breaks the workflow, so I gauge the depth by eye. I know that some of my colleagues require more precision. One way to accomplish this without having to keep measuring is to use a drill press: set the drill bit to the desired channel depth, drill holes, and gouge the holes away. Et voilà.

5a Finalising the edge thickness

5b Cutting the outline

5 Using a flat-soled thumb plane, I bring the edge thickness down to my scribe line. I would bypass this step on a model where evenness is not important, such as a ‘del Gesù’. Then I cut the outline with a knife. I don’t bother cleaning up the outline with files or sandpaper; by the time I am finished and the edges are turned, everything will be perfectly cleaned up

6 I finish the channel, going around it with a gouge, the shape of which determines that of the channel. I gouge all the way to the edge except at the corners. This will create an elegant swell after turning the edges.

Using the thumb plane

7 I clean the gouge marks with thumb planes. I leave the scraping for after the purfling, which means I won’t end up with too many ‘glue ghosts’.

8a Gouging the purfling

8b A fully scraped back

8 I insert the purfling after the arching channel is carved, because then I won’t need to carve the purfling channel too deep – it saves energy as well as material. (I also believe that Stradivari and his Cremonese contemporaries did it that way, but that is an argument for another time.)

9 Now it’s time to turn the edge. It always takes me a few cuts to find my groove, so I start on the underside of the plate. I use a knife to create one wide facet along the edge, followed by two smaller ones at shallow angles above and below it. The smaller facets overlap the middle one so that all three are equal in size. Then I do the same for the top side, leaving a fair amount untouched in between. I don’t like when my edges are too oval-shaped. When the edges are properly turned, I clean the facets with sandpaper. On old Cremonese instruments, the outline was most likely finalised after the box was closed, but because of the modern way of setting the neck, one gets to do things a little differently (for better or wors