Books › Violin making, 1902 › scan 54
Scan 54
Violin making, 1902
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1right side first. I cut through the pencil line, not entirely obliterating it (which you will not find easy), because, after awhile, I have to efface it altogether with a file, to a perfect, smooth line. These square corners, these curves of top, middle, and lower bouts—all and everything must be well done, and no one thing outside of beauty left for the critical eye to gape at.
3Turning the plate to the outer side, I press it flat, between the square let into the bench and the three-inch slip clamped about fifteen inches apart, as spoken of before. This is done so that it may be rigid whilst I take one inch rasp 47, and proceed to level all round the wood to about five-eighths of an inch and five-thirty-seconds of an inch deep. When I get to the ends of the back I loosen the wood, and use the file more freely at the end of the bench. But this is a matter left entirely to the workman. When this is nicely done, I wet a sponge and damp all I have gone over, surface and edge alike, and let it thoroughly dry, and when it is so, I employ medium cut file 63, half round, seven-eighths of an inch broad, and make the edge of the wood clean, and so even all round, that my first finger or thumb passes over the surface without a suspicion of irregularity suggesting itself. This, mind, must be most carefully done, as otherwise, if you, to make both ends meet, so to speak, take off here a morsel too much, and a little extra there, to repair your fault, thinking to improve your line, you will find it broken, and no longer in uninterrupted movement, as it should be. I would rather see almost anything bad about this noble instrument than a slovenly
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