Beginning violin making

[mendel]

On 2/12/2026 at 8:48 AM, Bodacious Cowboy said:

Start your rough arching and gouge down the edge thickness to around 6mm before you clean up the outline. That will save you a lot of time.

Just saw this now. It's too late I already filed it. but that would have saved me a lot of time!! But ty for the suggestion

[mendel]

Making some progress 

[mendel]

Does anyone know how much do the ribs affect the sound?

[Dr. Mark]

10 hours ago, mendel said:

Does anyone know how much do the ribs affect the sound?

What do you mean?

[mendel]

Let's say the ribs thickness is less then 1 mm would it make a big difference to the sound? Or if they are too thick 

[mendel]

This is what I'm up to now anyone have any suggestions or comments?

[Marty Kasprzyk]

On 2/11/2026 at 8:55 AM, Dr. Mark said:

I'll try to be open-minded.  Tell me how you came up with parabolic curves:

So you're saying that a parabolic curve and a catenary are the same?

Shallow parabolic and catenary curves are almost identical.

[Will Turner]

@mendel Looks good for your first top plate.   However, did some of the purfling get removed on the upper left C bout?   I had that happen on my first as well as I'd been too worried about the purfling depth and didn't go deep enough.  However, you could carefully cut that a little deeper and glue in a piece of purfling.   If you keep the cuts clean, it will be virtually unnoticeable after varnishing.

[Will Turner]

Oh, I also learned to use a thin hide glue size on the very edges when doing the edge work.   Keeps little chips of spruce from breaking loose.

[mendel]

1 hour ago, Will Turner said:

@mendel Looks good for your first top plate.   However, did some of the purfling get removed on the upper left C bout?   I had that happen on my first as well as I'd been too worried about the purfling depth and didn't go deep enough.  However, you could carefully cut that a little deeper and glue in a piece of purfling.   If you keep the cuts clean, it will be virtually unnoticeable after varnishing.

Yup. But I will fix that.

[Riccardo964]

It's becoming ! Good job, I'll await those fixes.

Cheerios,

Riccardo964

[mendel]

On 6/11/2026 at 7:12 AM, Riccardo964 said:

It's becoming ! Good job, I'll await those fixes.

Cheerios,

Riccardo964

Thanks.

[baroquecello]

On 3/31/2026 at 3:54 PM, mendel said:

Let's say the ribs thickness is less then 1 mm would it make a big difference to the sound? Or if they are too thick 

@Andreas Preuss wrote a very interesting thread on making experimental violins and went rather extreme in all ways with regards to ribs thickness. Ivthink you should look that thread up, because it might hold interesting information for you.

[Andreas Preuss]

On 6/14/2026 at 11:07 AM, baroquecello said:

@Andreas Preuss wrote a very interesting thread on making experimental violins and went rather extreme in all ways with regards to ribs thickness. Ivthink you should look that thread up, because it might hold interesting information for you.

The ignition for building a violin in a non conventional way came from a lecture I was doing almost 10 years ago at a violin making school in Japan. The purpose was very simple: if we understand what happens when we make an unusual alteration this should help to understand how the ‘sound machine’ works. It also helps to overcome certain persistent prejudices about what is important to the sound (and in reality doesn’t matter at all)

Making ribs ultra thin was based on the common accepted assumption that the ribs don’t actively participate in the sound production. So we look on the common accepted prejudice that sound is ‘configured’ by top and back plus some adjustments of bridge soundpost and neck angle.

How wrong this turned out to be. Paper thin ribs will kill the sound of the best instrument without any doubt. So the conclusion is that even though the ribs seem not to radiate much sound, they make the ‘frame’ to enable a proper sound production. 
 

Since then I am exploring a new approach in building violins, the approach of the new concept violin. 
 

What people might get wrong is that I am NOT trying to ‘improve the sound’. Violin sound has its own distinctive definition for the music it has to perform. The improvements aim at a more ergonomic design, somehow lighter weight, and if possible an easier way to calibrate the sound in the construction process especially in respect to high frequencies between roughly 1.5kHz and 6kHz.

 

 

[Don Noon]

3 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

 if possible an easier way to calibrate the sound in the construction process especially in respect to high frequencies between roughly 1.5kHz and 6kHz.

I wish you and me both good luck in figuring out that band range, although my approach is to look into theory first, and then think of some experiment to test it.  It has been mostly a black hole with no light excaping.

[Christine Meyer]

13 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

How wrong this turned out to be. Paper thin ribs will kill the sound of the best instrument without any doubt.

Would the the opposite be true up to some degree? My teacher told me to stay at 1 to 1.1 mm for a violin, but now I'm tempted to try 1.2 or 1.3 next time.

[Andreas Preuss]

11 hours ago, Don Noon said:

I wish you and me both good luck in figuring out that band range, although my approach is to look into theory first, and then think of some experiment to test it.  It has been mostly a black hole with no light excaping.

At least one of my experimental alterations came from a theory which was brought to me by Anders Buen and ended up in a positive result. 
 

However, makers working before the age of science had no other choice than working without theory and it seems that some of them were doing pretty well. 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

17 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

The ignition for building a violin in a non conventional way came from a lecture I was doing almost 10 years ago at a violin making school in Japan. The purpose was very simple: if we understand what happens when we make an unusual alteration this should help to understand how the ‘sound machine’ works. It also helps to overcome certain persistent prejudices about what is important to the sound (and in reality doesn’t matter at all)

Making ribs ultra thin was based on the common accepted assumption that the ribs don’t actively participate in the sound production. So we look on the common accepted prejudice that sound is ‘configured’ by top and back plus some adjustments of bridge soundpost and neck angle.

How wrong this turned out to be. Paper thin ribs will kill the sound of the best instrument without any doubt. So the conclusion is that even though the ribs seem not to radiate much sound, they make the ‘frame’ to enable a proper sound production. 
 

Since then I am exploring a new approach in building violins, the approach of the new concept violin. 
 

What people might get wrong is that I am NOT trying to ‘improve the sound’. Violin sound has its own distinctive definition for the music it has to perform. The improvements aim at a more ergonomic design, somehow lighter weight, and if possible an easier way to calibrate the sound in the construction process especially in respect to high frequencies between roughly 1.5kHz and 6kHz.

 

 

The vibrating top plate and back plate are coupled with the ribs.  Thin ribs couple less than stiff thick ribs which decreases the various body mode frequencies. So the rib thickness is an important variable in determing the sound character of the violin.

The attached graphs and paper by Colin Gough shows how the commonly seen various plate modes (1,2,5 etc.) gradually morph into the higher frequency body modes (B1-, B1+ etc.) as the rib stiffness is increased from near zero to full stiffness.

2013_Vibrational_modes_of_the_violin_family.pdf

[Don Noon]

Those charts only go to 1 kHz, and we're talking about the super-important range above that... where there's not much helpful information around.

[Andreas Preuss]

21 hours ago, Christine Meyer said:

Would the the opposite be true up to some degree? My teacher told me to stay at 1 to 1.1 mm for a violin, but now I'm tempted to try 1.2 or 1.3 next time.

1.1 to 1.2 is typical for original instruments by Antonio Stradivari, but he used very solid linings. 
 

The strength of the rib garland as a whole depends in my view more on the size and thickness of the linings than the actual thickness of the ribs. In Sacconis book there are good pictures. His linings are around 1.8mm thick and 8-9mm high. (Really solid!)
 

I think also that inserting the linings in the Cremonese way into the corner blocks contributes to the overall stiffness. 
 

I think contrary to many writings in textbooks that the method of bending ribs in the shop of Antonio Stradivari was without bending iron, because you find consistently thicknesses around .7mm at the corner areas. 
 

I tried this out in practice and it works very well: The thin ribs are soaked in water for over 24 hours with an addition of vinegar.  This loosens the cell structure in the wood. Then the ribs are bent with the help of a wooden form onto which they are hold until they are dry. (This might take over 24 hours) The bending forms have a little steeper curve than the actual outline because they will rebounce a little when taken off from the form. This method is, after the moulds habe been made, ultra fast and convenient. The time used for bending the ribs shrinks to almost nothing.

The same method can be used for linings but it is necessary to use Willow. Stradivari was apparently the only Cremonese maker to use willow linings and I suspect that his bending method was the reason for it. 

 

[Christine Meyer]

44 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

1.1 to 1.2 is typical for original instruments by Antonio Stradivari, but he used very solid linings. 

 

Good to know, I'll try 1.2 and 1.3 just for fun on the next instruments just for fun.

44 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

I think contrary to many writings in textbooks that the method of bending ribs in the shop of Antonio Stradivari was without bending iron, because you find consistently thicknesses around .7mm at the corner areas. 

I tried this out in practice and it works very well: The thin ribs are soaked in water for over 24 hours with an addition of vinegar.  This loosens the cell structure in the wood. Then the ribs are bent with the help of a wooden form onto which they are hold until they are dry. (This might take over 24 hours) The bending forms have a little steeper curve than the actual outline because they will rebounce a little when taken off from the form. This method is, after the moulds habe been made, ultra fast and convenient. The time used for bending the ribs shrinks to almost nothing.

The same method can be used for linings but it is necessary to use Willow. Stradivari was apparently the only Cremonese maker to use willow linings and I suspect that his bending method was the reason for it. 

Another interesting point. Hargrave's text says that Del Gesù thinned the ends of his ribs to < 1 mm, presumably to facilitate easier bending without heat. 

I already have a dummy c-bout form to help in preparing the ribs, I could try bending wet ribs over night with that, although it works well with heat, especially if I clamp them to the blocks while still hot and slightly moist, to let them cool down in place.

[David Beard]

37 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

The strength of the rib garland as a whole depends in my view more on the size and thickness of the linings than the actual thickness of the ribs. In Sacconis book there are good pictures. His linings are around 1.8mm thick and 8-9mm high. (Really solid!)
 

I believe you're right about this.

To my view, the combination of very thin ribs and robust lining and edges is characteristic of Cremona work, and only grew more pronounced as the tradition continue and their preferences evolved.

I suspect that they 'trial and errored' their way into preferring this combination.

I little science knowledge and an engineering can do attitude might easily seduce a maker into over balancing in one direction or another.

In contrast, their practices seemed to focus on almost entirely repeating the design choices of prior and recent successes.  But, also sprinkling a very minor portion of exploratory choices, following up on enticing possibility or another.

In a modern mind set, we might conjecture that the very thin ribs allow a fitting stiffness for the issues Gough study earlier in the thread point to, with enough strength in the edges and linings to support relative Independence in out of plane motions for the plates.

We might even have further intellectual notions.  Like, I personally have fanciful notions of the edges as a separate mass system that gives a place for high frequency noisy energy to collect and even perhaps recycle into supporting the musical signal.  It's a very half-baked and undefendable notion, but I'm somehow attached to the idea.

But, with the old traditions, mental notions like that are never fully let off the leash to over power and unbalance things that are already working harmoniously.  In the old practice, or at least as it appears,  I would probably translate these personal intuitions or suspicions into making slight various exploring combinations of slightly thinner ribs and barely more robust edges over my next several instruments.

 

[Davide Sora]

4 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

I think contrary to many writings in textbooks that the method of bending ribs in the shop of Antonio Stradivari was without bending iron, because you find consistently thicknesses around .7mm at the corner areas. 

While I find this reduction in thickness consistent in Del Gesù violins, I don't notice it in Stradivari instruments. I admit that my sample is not very extensive, but from what I've seen, I'd say the opposite, that is, rib with constant thickness even on the corner blocks. Could you name some Stradivari violins where you've seen this feature? I think it's an interesting aspect to explore.

[Don Noon]

6 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

The strength of the rib garland as a whole depends in my view more on the size and thickness of the linings than the actual thickness of the ribs. 

That might be true for the garland by itself, but with plates glued to the edges of the ribs, that's where the real stiffness comes in... as far as beam stiffness.  For lateral bending and shear, yeah, the linings matter a lot, as well as giving a decent gluing area for the plates.

[Andreas Preuss]

10 hours ago, Davide Sora said:

While I find this reduction in thickness consistent in Del Gesù violins, I don't notice it in Stradivari instruments. I admit that my sample is not very extensive, but from what I've seen, I'd say the opposite, that is, rib with constant thickness even on the corner blocks. Could you name some Stradivari violins where you've seen this feature? I think it's an interesting aspect to explore.

At least the one I restored in Morels shop the Godowski (was it 1727?) for sure. 

There is also somewhere a comment by John Dilworth in an article. I just don’t agree with his interpretation saying the corner areas were thinned down from the outside after finishing the rib garland. (Don’t ask me in which Strad magazine on which page) 

Anyway, my complete analysis of Antonio Stradivaris designs brought me step by step to the conclusion that all was about ‘precise, fast and efficient’ work. And bending ribs over a mould is really fun and spares you burning your fingers by accident.