Many of you will have been following my progress on building a pochette or travel fiddle on my other blog
After a total of about ten days work spread over about six weeks I now have a pochette! They said it takes ages to learn how to make a violin – they were right – I must’ve studied violin making for at least three hours, reading the whole book from cover to cover (ok looked at the pictures…).
Bit of work on the bandsaw, the drill press and the angle grinder and there it was…
And quite suddenly the instrument was finished.
As I tightened the strings I could hear that at least some of my wild guesses were right, and I was rewarded with a warm sound almost as loud as a normal violin. In fact it is as loud as my Maggini copy. That was my first surprise. The second was that with the first tuning up the wood moved to accommodate the strain and the strings quickly went out of tune. But after a couple of hours it stabilised and I was rewarded with quite a reasonable sound at good volume. Not too bad for a first attempt!
Here is the instrument that inspired mine
And finally – what does it sound like? I’ll let you be the judge!
First up, I’m still maintaining this one – but I thought i’d try an experiment with a single-topic blog – Four Strings – which will be about all things fiddle and violin and folk music. So the music posts you have enjoyed here will now be on the Four Strings blog.
The main thing I’m working on at the moment is a pochette – a travel fiddle – that I am making using traditional violin making techniques. So there’s also something there for the woodworker. My latest post there is about how to bend the sides – hence “Bend it like Antonio” (Stradivarius).
Let me know what you think of it. If it works well, I may set up a couple of other single-topic blogs so you can follow your favourite theme. Of course the eclectic ‘random notebook’ style of this one will continue as usual
I’ve been reading Bruce Ossman’s book: Violin Making: A Guide for the Amateur. This is an excellent book showing with clear diagrams every stage of violin construction. My only minor criticism is the mix of metric and imperial measurements – thicknesses are in 1/32″ while lengths are in centimetres – but the clear diagrams throughout are very self explanatory.
From this I have adapted the techniques of traditional violin making to design and begin construction of a pochette – a kind of travel fiddle popular in the eighteenth century by itinerant dancing masters.
So far I have the mold made and the ribs cut to size and thicknessed. A friendly luthier gave me a spare violin neck with which to try the experiment – I’ll blog progress with this, my latest woodworking project 🙂
Posted by jerry on January 14th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, Music
Yes, it’s been the bane of my Hardanger fiddle (hardingfele) – the lack of fine tuners for the sympathetic strings. Today all that is changed! When I made the new bridge and reshaped the nut I did try hooking a one-quarter size tailpiece over the main tail-piece to get eight fine tuners – string adjusters – but that placed the adjusters right up against the bridge – even with the tail-gut shortened.
After some measurement, I figured that if I could push the under-tail-piece back by 1.5cm I could position the bridge in the correct place, and not have the string cotton windings sitting on the bridge.
The answer lay in a 3/16″ bolt. I lined up the two tail-pieces in the vice and drilled through them both to achieve the right overhang. I then threaded a bolt up through the quarter size tail-piece, then placed a nut between the two tail-pieces to provide clearance for the upper fine-tuners to work, and then finished the top with a washer and nut.
After re-assembly I can now state that the double-decker tail-pieces still clear the violin’s belly by a good margin and now allow for fine tuners on all eight strings!
If you have fitted fine tuners to a hardanger fiddle – please let me know and perhaps share a photo
Posted by jerry on January 9th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, Music
Some time ago My daughter acquired a banjo mandolin – an eight-string plucked/strummed instrument with the size and tuning of a mandolin – but with a small banjo-like skin for the sounding board. Although the frets were (unusually) in tune, the instrument was in poor shape with the wooden soundbox collapsing at either end resulting in an unplayable high action.
The solution? To dismantle the instrument and relocate the neck and string courses at 90 degrees – where the body sides were still vertical. This entailed drilling some new holes for the neck attachment and relocation of the tail-piece, the addition of a button for a strap and a new set of strings. I also sanded down the frets a bit as they were sitting quite high off the fingerboard.
And here is the result – a playable if rather strange instrument!
Also known as a mandolin-banjo this hybrid instrument was invented around the mid 1890s and was popular in the 1920s in the heyday of mandolin orchestras. It has a big sound for a small instrument which made them popular in dance halls at a time when instruments were beginning to be amplified, and they would have been good for busking for that reason too.
The eight strings are tuned in four courses (same-pitch pairs) using standard mandolin or violin tuning G-D-A-E from lowest to highest.
. This is an excellent book showing with clear diagrams every stage of violin construction. My only minor criticism is the mix of metric and imperial measurements – thicknesses are in 1/32″ while lengths are in centimetres – but the clear diagrams throughout are very self explanatory.
