April 30, 2012 at 7:04 PM
Post No. 11From this canal, the arching of the entire back and front piece begins to rise. At first in a rather rough form, using increasingly smaller and more exact gauges:
Then, when the general shape of the instrument’s body has been sculptured – because honestly more than anything else, this phase involves sculpturing the wood into the carved, unique, hand-made shape that will give the instrument its body and character – the really exact tools come into play. Yonatan uses special planes called “thumb planes”, which look more like Jewelry than like wood-working tools, and come in numerous sizes.
Up until recently…well, actually up until a few minutes ago, I thought the difference was that the smaller the thumb-plane was, the more delicately it scraped, and the finer the trucioli that it produces. Well, let me tell you, when I said this, Yonatan gave me the most incredulous, condescending look. He explained that “obviously” that’s not the case, and the difference is that you can use the larger planes on the larger instruments, where the curves are much wider. The smaller and more exact planes are used to follow the curves of the smaller instruments in the quartet. Of course! Silly me! I guess this stuff should be basic pre-marital education for any and all violin-makers’ wives…
So finally – one last picture of the way the cello, the viola and one violin look by now, ready for the very last phase of the Bombatura process – what, did you really think that’s it?? – which I’ll write about next week.
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