MikeC's bench

[MikeC]

After posting a picture of my corner, I realized it was kind of short and stumpy looking so I reworked it some.   There is enough overhang on the edges leading into the corner for a little bit of shaping, and a little bit makes a difference. 

But I still don't like how the corner looks, well I have three more chances to get it right.  

 

 

 

 

[Sean Couch]

Aha, the corner saga continues.

I can't offer any advice, but I think from here on out, I’m going to make them to suit my eye. I don’t think yours look bad at all. Since the corners are one of the few areas that are left to interpretation, I reckon they can be whatever we want them to be.

[Evan Smith]

On 6/16/2024 at 8:12 PM, MikeC said:

After posting a picture of my corner, I realized it was kind of short and stumpy looking so I reworked it some.   There is enough overhang on the edges leading into the corner for a little bit of shaping, and a little bit makes a difference. 

But I still don't like how the corner looks, well I have three more chances to get it right.

With corners, a little bit can make a huge difference. There is a language to corners, and there are rules. Amati, Strad, DelGesu, they didn't just do it till they thought it looked good, there are geometric principles behind it, looking good to me, and to most people will look self taught,,home made, looking good according to geometric principles with a touch of artistic flair will always look elegant. Some of us have spent years studying Italian corners, they are elegant and refined. It is all in how the curves intersect each other, whether or not the radius changes throughout the curve, or remains the same, and how they intersect at the corners end. The impression should be that the lines are going to continue and curl back out and away from each other, not follow the corner out and at some distant point and cross each other at the end. It only takes a tiny bit of refinement to accomplish this final look. I personally at this early stage, would never finish the corners without the purfling in and the plate on the ribs, it is good enough to get a clean overhang, the basic corners cut out according to the shape of the mold, then the purf. It is the whole that has to congeal together along with the f's. It all looks completely different when it is assembled, then it is much easier to pull the corners into shape.

Once a few are finished it all becomes evident. Davide can do anything in any order he wants, he has a crystal clear vision of his goal,,, from all directions, before and after.

I would never put in any tribute to him unless I sat under his wings for a while, and could make a fiddle that looks like he might have made it, with all due respect.

Evan, just blathering on.

[MikeC]

Well I was away for a long weekend, back now.   I was just kidding about putting alumnus Sora,  just me being funny.  

yeah I'm going to have to think about the corners a bit...  

[Mike Atkins]

28 minutes ago, MikeC said:

Well I was away for a long weekend, back now.   I was just kidding about putting alumnus Sora,  just me being funny.  

yeah I'm going to have to think about the corners a bit...  

While it’s funny it’s also kind of true…we all probably owe a great deal to Mr Sora

[Evan Smith]

On 6/23/2024 at 12:51 PM, MikeC said:

 yeah I'm going to have to think about the corners a bit... 

hey Mike, I don't mean to jump in from nowhere, and appear like the devil,

I really have other things to do than to post on an internet forum,,, for now, though I do miss teaching (20 yrs) and the interactions, internet is not the same as. Violins have been the center of my life for decades, so without it, something fundamentally is sorta missing,,,. That being as it may,, I think that I often am too short, to the point and thoughtless,, for, ,,,I think that ....."The",

"I know something and you don't"

attitude is really dark, and I may sometimes project that unwittingly.

I really enjoy watching you guys do this stuff for the first time. It is really amazing ,the availability of good information now days and how well able you are to correctly produce something that is decent, right out of the gate, congratulations!

And a mention for Davide and the great service he provides in our favor.

A really good way to see corners and understand them, is to take photos and print or have them printed, a stack of them,,,some full size, and some, just the corners blown up extra large,, the size of your hand large,,the bigger the better. Back plates are more complete. Strad, Amati,,, and Del Gesu can be particularly interesting. Then take a compass, and  relax, and sit down at a nice table in the park and just draw circles around the corners, and see how things interact.

The compass is the law, so just pay attention, and see how things measure up to perfection, and judge accordingly.

Once you get it in your head, you can't get it out, so be careful what you put in there. You will be able to make any kind of corner that you would like, perfectly. You can watch it take shape at your will.

Have you seen the pics of the Lady Blunt corners that Michael Darnton so graciously posted? Those would teach a lot, they are as perfectly preserved as you will see, blown up they will show it all on closer inspection, but will thy pass muster?

Some Del Gesu back plates are stunning, as are some Strads. Amati's can be spectacularly elegant, You need to look as them through the eyes of perfection to really see them.

[MikeC]

hey Evan, no offence taken, any advice is appreciated!   Yes, I've got good images of Le Messie but not Lady Blunt.  The Messiah is about as pristine as it gets I guess so I've been looking at those a lot.   Also there is an old thread here on MN showing compass circles and corners worth taking a long look at.   

I was thinking if the plate overhang is 2.5mm if you carried that out to the corners you would have a corner width of 5mm but 7mm seems to be the norm, so then you have to decide where to put the 2 extra mm.  On the C bout side, or the outer bout side or split the difference.   

I'll post a few pics here for reference. 

 

[Andreas Preuss]

My simple advice for eye training is: take a paper and a pencil and a good picture of a Cremonese corner and draw it. Every day before you start working. Then after having it done often enough draw corners in the style of Amati, Stradivari or del Gesu without a photo. 
 

You can’t make a nice corner if you don’t have the picture in your head. At least this was my experience when training young violin makers.

Edit: your corners look pretty good.

[MikeC]

Hi Andreas, thanks for the advice.   I certainly need to practice drawing corners.   The pictures I just posted should look nice, those aren't mine, it's the Messiah Strad.    I just posted those for reference.   I found them while reading through old corner shaping discussions here on MN.  

Mine don't look nearly that good.  

I'll post some pictures of mine later this evening.  

 

 

[MikeC]

ok, I took some pictures of my corners so far...  I'm going to make a good corner template and to better on the top plate. 

Anyone comparing these to a Strad would immediately say wow, that's looks like a back yard amateur!  heh

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ernym]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:13 AM, Evan Smith said:

 I personally at this early stage, would never finish the corners without the purfling in and the plate on the ribs, 

Like Evan,  I leave the corners long and finish them after ther purfling is in and the corpus is closed.

[MikeC]

You guys have more experience than I do so maybe I should give that a try,  maybe  saw out a section of a plate in scrap wood and see how that works.   It seems to make more sense to me to design the layout and inlay of purfling on a finished corner so you have some boundaries that the prufling has to fit within and a defined point at which to aim the bee sting.   Of course that means you have to have a well designed corner with the right curves and angle on the end.  That's where I have some difficulty.   

[John Harte]

Mike, there's a lot of excellent advice regarding corner shaping given above.

At the risk of stating the obvious, in your case the back outline is following your rib outline which in turn is established by your mould and block outlines.  Corner block outlines are an important factor in how corners end up looking as is well illustrated in Figs. 49 and 98 in Sacconi's book “The Secrets of Stradivari”.  These drawings clearly show the way in which Strad plate outlines in corners generally follow and then deviate from rib/corner block outlines.

For anyone making a Strad pattern, I would suggest largely ignoring the corner template shapes associated with each of Strad's moulds.  If you were, for example, making a PG pattern instrument and wanting to produce corners of similar profile to those of the Messiah I would suggest closely studying the image of the Messiah rib outline and blocks superimposed on the PG mould that Davide Sora has posted here: https://maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/339864-the-pg-mould-does-not-fit-the-messiah-poster/  Adding a plate outline over this and applying what Sacconi has suggested plus fudging other outline details (e.g., what often happens where the C bout rib joins the upper corner block) should result in corner profiles that are in the direction of your Messiah corner photos.

[MikeC]

Hi John

Below is figure 49 from Sacconi and one of my corners.    

I'm actually using the P form and have the Titian poster as sort of a guide, more for the arching templates.  

I can see from Sacconi's drawing how the overhang widens slightly on the upper / lower bout and perhaps a little in the C bout as well.  

I posted the Messiah pics because those are as far as I know the best preserved corners, so a good reference. 

 

I like Davide's comments in that thread, especially the first one, which is basically my approach since I'm not trying to make a copy of a particular instrument, just something in the style of.

"1) use the original form's shape as it is and do what Stradivari did, just use it and make your own violin with the same form that Stradivari used "

 

Here's a closeup of one of my corners so you can see it in better detail.  Some of my corners are better than others.  

 

[John Harte]

Hi Mike,

Figure 98 more clearly illustrates the general concept even though, in this case, a cello profile is involved.  The (accurately produced) widths of the borders and the points at which they begin to deviate are important.

I would also again suggest that you carefully study the image that Davide posted.  Take a very good look at what happens to the C bout rib line as it transitions from the mould outline onto the corner block profiles.  Note the corner block curvatures and how at the transition point between mould and block, the blocks sit proud of the mould profile.  To emphasize this point, below is a rib tracing from an open c.1714 Strad that I have placed over the G mould outline.  Note what happens as the rib outline transitions into the corner block regions and also what the actual shape of the corner block profile has to be to achieve this.

I imagine that you have a CT scan of the Titian rib outline. This may be on the poster and, if not, can be found amongst the Strad3D data.  This should provide some sort of basis for laying out corners that look more towards what you see on the Titian.

[MikeC]

Unfortunately I have already made the rib garland but from that I can see that the corner blocks would have to rise above the mould outline.  If I build a third one, I'll remember that.  

[MikeC]

Finally I had some time this evening to make some progress.  I started marking out the edge scoop.  Also started carving but I'll save that for another video. 

 

[MikeC]

After starting the edge fluting I realized I still had way too much arch especially in the C bout area so I start flattening the edges more and carving away excess in the C bouts. 

 

[MikeC]

Cutting the edge fluting. 

 

 

 

[MikeC]

More work on the back plate 

 

 

[Sean Couch]

Right on, looking good Mike. Those paint stick templates look like a dream to use compared to what I was doing. Unfortunately, by the time you told me about the paint sticks, I was almost done with my arching. lol.

I probably wasted 10+ hours by using my flimsy paper templates. Not to mention the time I lost by not correctly setting the long arch first. I did set it, but not down to the correct height, then did the cross arching, then back to the 6th, etc. Each time I set the 6th, I basically obliterated the work I did on the 5ths. I was too scared to get close to final heights at the beginning, so I basically tripled (maybe quadrupled) the work. It was silliness.

[MikeC]

4 minutes ago, Sean Couch said:

Right on, looking good Mike. Those paint stick templates look like a dream to use compared to what I was doing. Unfortunately, by the time you told me about the paint sticks, I was almost done with my arching. lol.

I probably wasted 10+ hours by using my flimsy paper templates. Not to mention the time I lost by not correctly setting the long arch first. I did set it, but not down to the correct height, then did the cross arching, then back to the 6th, etc. Each time I set the 6th, I basically obliterated the work I did on the 5ths. I was too scared to get close to final heights at the beginning, so I basically tripled (maybe quadrupled) the work. It was silliness.

Don't feel bad, I was doing much the same.  My initial height was 18mm thinking I'll lower it down gradually. Then I went through several iterations of arching.   Once I did the fluting around the edges, I measured the arch height and it was still too high.   Then I went over the whole long arch with a small plane until I got it down to 16mm. I was aiming for 16.5 but not being super exact, it's a little under that.  

I have a 30mm wide strip down the center and stopping my cross arch at that point, figure I'll round that over in the final arching.  

Davide Sora as we all know has awesome videos and I watch them multiple times.  But I found another luthier, Lucas Fabro that has some good video content also.  That's where I got the idea for the 30mm strip and also the 3 centimeter line around the bouts to help guide my arching.   He has a paid course but also has a lot of good free content. 

I think I mentioned the paint sticks a second time in your thread, forgetting that I had already mentioned it, sorry about that.  I'm old and have CRS... Can't Remember Shtuff!  lol  

 

[Sean Couch]

Ahaha, no worries, I have a bad case of CRS also.

Yes, I have seen some of Lucas’ videos, and of course I’ve seen Davide’s. I even remember watching Mr. Sora’s video of him setting the 6th, and it still wasn’t enough to turn on the light bulb. I am extremely remedial at times. Ahaha

[MikeC]

Working on the final arch shape. 

This turned out to be a long video.  I'm just showing one side.  I did the other side off camera.

 

 

[MikeC]

For those of you who don't want to watch an hour and half video,     Here's a couple photos showing the arch.  This is unrefined from the gouge with a little bit of toothed plane smoothing.  This plate has nearly horizontal flames which help to show the contour almost like having laser lines projected on it.  

At this angle, lighted by the computer monitor I can see some areas that need some tweaking.  But overall I think it's turning out well.  

There is a recent discussion on full vs scooped arching.  I think having the concave / recurve roughly about a third of the distance from the edge to the top of the arch is about right.  

Also I'll include a picture of the kitchen remodel which has caused some delays in the violin build.  Pouring epoxy countertops is not fun.  

My shop helper decided to pose for the camera.  I'm still trying to teach him to fetch me an ice cream.