Is this arching wrong ?

[Arsalan]

Hello everyone 

I appreciate it if you can tell me , the way this arching looks in this picture, is it wrong ? Is it just too full but not wrong ? 
 

thank you 

[Davide Sora]

Not my favorite, but if the violin works well, the arching will be fine too. How the violin works is the fundamental data that is often missing.

[FiddleDoug]

Arching comes in all different flavors. Stainers are very full arching.

[jacobsaunders]

5 hours ago, Arsalan said:

Hello everyone 

I appreciate it if you can tell me , the way this arching looks in this picture, is it wrong ? Is it just too full but not wrong ? 
 

thank you 

The arching is perfect

[HoGo]

2 hours ago, FiddleDoug said:

Arching comes in all different flavors. Stainers are very full arching.

Nomenclature can be different among folks. I would call the stainer high and the Gesu very full.

[Nick Allen]

10 hours ago, Arsalan said:

Hello everyone 

I appreciate it if you can tell me , the way this arching looks in this picture, is it wrong ? Is it just too full but not wrong ? 
 

thank you 

There really is no wrong arching. There is suboptimal arching for a given piece of wood, but even then the end results are still up to interpretation. 

[Dennis J]

FiddleDoug's scans photo shows how arching thickness and shape can differ from maker to maker. Apart from an overly thin part on the front arching Stradivari wins the optimal/suboptimal contest. The back is beautifully formed.

It would be nice to think that it would also win tonally.

 

[FiddleMkr]

I made a fiddle from a 7/8” thick piece of maple that a cabinet maker gave me and made the arches as high as I could, as an experiment, and to try to make a quiet fiddle. It definitely was (is) quieter. However it sounds good; i.e. it has a very good tone, it is just not a loud instrument. From this I would say that there is really not an upper limit to the arching, but there is some sacrifice of volume when the arching goes past a point.  
      However this is a sample size of 1. 

[GerardM]

On 11/30/2023 at 1:44 PM, HoGo said:

Nomenclature can be different among folks. I would call the stainer high and the Gesu very full.

I often wondered what was meant by a Full arching. Thank you for pointing this out.

[baroquecello]

On 11/30/2023 at 12:39 PM, FiddleDoug said:

Arching comes in all different flavors. Stainers are very full arching.

Off topic, but, this reminds me that I read somewhere regarding graduations, that a thicker centre and thinner along the outline for the top plate was called a German graduation schem, while the inverse was called an Italian scheme. I didn't believe it at the time, practically all graduation plans I've seen are of the German type, but of these three instruments the two big name Italian ones concur exactly with that notion. Any opinions on the matter?

[LCF]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:09 PM, FiddleDoug said:

Arching comes in all different flavors. Stainers are very full arching.

 

That is a fascinating comparison in many ways - the grain directions wrt the arch and the thicknesses etc. The Stainer arch looks like a vertically zoomed version of the Strad. They have ~ the same inflexion point distance from the edge so there is a family resemblance. The GdG looks unrelated. 

Have those central thicknesses been modified?

[LCF]

3 minutes ago, LCF said:

That is a fascinating comparison in many ways - the grain directions wrt the arch and the thicknesses etc. The Stainer arch looks like a vertically zoomed version of the Strad. They have ~ the same inflexion point distance from the edge so there is a family resemblance. The GdG looks unrelated. 

Have those central thicknesses been modified?

Looks like a lot of repair work on the Stainer eg with that half edging. The bass bar seems inappropriately high. 

[uncle duke]

On 11/30/2023 at 1:16 AM, Arsalan said: everyone 

 

thank you 

Isn’t that an Amati?

[uncle duke]

6 hours ago, baroquecello said:

Off topic, but, this reminds me that I read somewhere regarding graduations, that a thicker centre and thinner along the outline for the top plate was called a German graduation schem, while the inverse was called an Italian scheme. I didn't believe it at the time, practically all graduation plans I've seen are of the German type, but of these three instruments the two big name Italian ones concur exactly with that notion. Any opinions on the matter?

That is just the center bridge area right?

[baroquecello]

42 minutes ago, uncle duke said:

That is just the center bridge area right?

sort of, the area between the f holes, yeah. 

[HoGo]

It's impossible to tell with any certainty but when you look at typical (current) Strad thicknesses, you'll se that the central area of top is around 2.5-2.7mm thick while the thickness at Cremonese channeling in centerbouts is expected to be ideally at 3.5mm so ther is transition from thinner center towards thicker edges in the central part of top and if some wood is missing due to numerous repairs in the central parts it will be even more noticeable. OTOH, the upper/ lower bouts of Strad are 2.5mm +-, but the edges are about 1 mm thinner than at center bout, the "graduation" scheme looks more even thickness across width.

Stainer is known for his central thick island and it shows. You can see that there is not as much difference in general curvature of INSIDES of the three violins, Stainer just excavated vast areas of channel on the outside to create the "recurve" bow shape, if you add thickness at the outside to match the center and transision into channeling  you'll get something quite close to Strad (except height/overall thickness).

Now if you look at the Guarneri it looks almost as if Strad made the violin and forgot to finish carving/scraping the whole purfling area after doing the purfling.

Of course there are other works of the same masters that show slightly different archings but the theme is generally similar.

[baroquecello]

@HoGo thank you for your elaborate answer! 

[Delabo]

What is the OP violin?  old Saxon?

No purfling - high arching - deeply scooped edges.

Or did the Italians make similar violins?

[fscotte]

I suspect Strad may have done some outside tuning after assembly. 

[HoGo]

Roger Hargraves reconstruction of "cremonese" edgework method suggests that at least to some extent the purfling channel was finished after the violin was closed. Whether the box was closed with flat platforms at the edges or partially excavated channeling is not known. But he final scraping after purfling was certainly done on closed bodies. There is the measuring tool supposedly from Strads workshop that allows measuring thicknesses of closed violin.

[Davide Sora]

50 minutes ago, HoGo said:

 There is the measuring tool supposedly from Strads workshop that allows measuring thicknesses of closed violin.

That thickness gauge barely reaches the area around the f-holes, I don't think it was used to measure thicknesses during construction. Perhaps to check the thicknesses of the central area of finished instruments that passed by in the workshop

[reguz]

Every time I read something about arching it is very poor. Arching is all over the instrument not only at the location of the sound post/bridge. There almost notning happens when string load act on the instrument. This seem to be very poor understood condition.

[HoGo]

6 minutes ago, reguz said:

Every time I read something about arching it is very poor. Arching is all over the instrument not only at the location of the sound post/bridge. There almost notning happens when string load act on the instrument. This seem to be very poor understood condition.

So, now I wonder why those folks with poor understanding of arching actually make great violins and you don't.

You should start building them to show everyone how it should be done. And please document each step so everyone will see how great your knowledge of violin building is.

[LCF]

On 12/5/2023 at 10:19 PM, HoGo said:

.... You can see that there is not as much difference in general curvature of INSIDES of the three violins, 

This is an interesting possibility. The small amount of re-edging on the GdG confuses the issue a little but by holding a straight edge against the inner curves I think you still find that the recurve point of the inner arch of the Guarneri is also closer to the edge than either the Strad or the Stainer which are very similar. You might say it (GdG)  has a Maggini tendency, different DNA.

Is it only Guarneri instruments which have the famous 'hole' in the middle of the tops? I think I read it is a small cone rather than a cylinder.

If the inner arch is made first, body assembled and outside finished by planing/scraping this cone could be an indication of thickness in the centre of the top as wood is removed. When you see the tip of the cone appearing on the outside it is time to stop. Edgework being slightly thicker gives  a safe thickness away from the centre within the parameters of the arching style.

The "lungs" , upper and lower bouts might be tweaked for performance?   

Something like that. I'm not sure how the thicknesses on the long arch would work out. 

 

 

[HoGo]

I strongly doubt the inner arch was done first. There were many arguments about order of operations and these folks were quite pragmatic. Roger Hargrave describes their working mthosd quite plausibly in his articles.

Many folks think that GdG instrument likely left his hands with quite thicker tops (and backs) than what we see now so it's hard to judge from just this one example.

AFAIK, the dorsal pins were in the back only and Amati and Guarneri families used them as well as Stainer.