Violin Forum/Message Board

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2014 6:34 pm Post subject:

I wonder if you are taking your archings from STRAD magazine posters? If so, you need to understand that most old violins have collapsed forward under string pressure, to a side profile more like a banana. This means that the long archings, which are taken from the ends and don't recognize the collapse is happening, won't match the cross archings, which also don't recognize there's a collapse situation, but are looking at it from the other direction, crosswise.

So, on a back, the cross arching templates will be about 2mm low relative to the long arch, and on the top, 2mm high, relative to the long arch. There are a couple of solutions, but the one that you should use in your present jam is to cut the cross templates in half, and use them as half templates. Then they can be tilted to fit what you have, and then you can fine tune the arching to them. There will be a little smoothing needed in the center, where they won't meet right.

The important factor is to get the point where the negatively-curved scoop straightens and turns into a positive curve in the right place, and especially to get the scoop right up to that point. What's happening in the middle is slightly less important.

One of the things we do in my summer class is to re-engineer the whole arch, taking out the twists and bends of age, trying to figure out what was there in the first place, 300 years ago before everything went haywire with time and pressure, and making templates to that.

Regarding the importance of arching--I learned that from Bob Bein at Bein & Fushi when I worked in the shop there. He always could pick out which violins were going to work and which weren't and when I asked how he said it was entirely about the arch. And in the 30 years since then I have come to exactly the same conclusion. He used that to his advantage at auctions, for instance, where he wouldn't give a second glance to instruments that he didn't think had good enough arches to be winners--and then would buy ones that did consistently did work well, even though they didn't have strings when he saw them. Success demonstrated, over and over, is hard to ignore!
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terryc · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 7:28 am Post subject:

[quote] I wonder if you are taking your archings from STRAD magazine posters?

Michael,
Yes indeed I used the Strad Poster for my template. As you suggested, I have cut the template in half and find where the scoop starts to turn positive, my arch turns more abruptly. Will try to rework the arch to some degree as material allows.
I sincerely appreciate you pointing out the need for a "work around" on the Strad Poster and incite to a potential fix.
Thanks again,
Terry

kjb · Super Member Joined: 06 Feb 2013 Posts: 385

are the long arches correct on the posters or do they need to be adjusted also?

Michael Darnton · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 8:29 am Post subject:

The question might be are they correct to the violins now or alternately, are they correct to the way the violins were made. They're probably close to the way the violins are now, distorted by 300 years of use and reshaping at the hands of distortion, repeated cycles of distortion and correction. They certainly aren't correct to the violins when new.

That's why I've tried to reverse-engineer how they would have been originally, from the clues that still remain, and teach that in my summer class, since we are making new violins, not old ones.
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Dave Chandler · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:11 pm Post subject: Long Arch

If I may continue a discussion from this past March -- before I make a violin from a poster, I plot the height of the back and front arches on a spreadsheet and create a graph to see where the long arch may have distorted. Here I plotted the Guarnari Del Gesu "Plowden" as I measured it from the poster, and the Strad "Messiah" of which I have a blueprint.

Its not to scale, its just a quick and dirty way to reshape the long arch. Sometimes, I've even adjusted these values to ensure that the volume under the new arch is consistent with the volume under the distorted arch, but you have to make a few assumptions to keep it simple, like presuming the lateral arches are straight lines to the edges, etc. You can get as complicated as you want, but I think just smoothing the arch out a bit certainly must get you closer to the makers original intent.

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kjb · Super Member Joined: 06 Feb 2013 Posts: 385

interesting.

ctviolin · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:01 am Post subject:

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:37 pm Post subject:

Well, the one undeniable fact about a violin is that it's a violin. You have to wander far off the track to make something that's perceived as being not-a-violin. I think this is why there's so much contention about good old ones: the differences are very subtle, not heard by most people, including (unfortunately) most violin makers, and utterly critical to performers who have realized the difference and then can't live without it.

It's similar to how you don't really appreciate a sharp knife if yours have always been 80% sharp until you've used a 100% sharp one, and then nothing else will suffice.
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Dave Chandler · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 7:36 pm Post subject: Graduations and Arching

Got it.
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Cliff Green · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 9:26 am Post subject:

Since it is unlikely that I'll have more than casual contact with good old instruments or the players that hear and feel the difference, I guess I will have to be satisfied with the best I can do.

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 11:14 am Post subject:

And guess what--for most players, especially those buying new violins, that's all that's needed--to do your best.
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Cliff Green · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 1:29 pm Post subject:

Thanks, that is encouraging.
I sometimes wonder if our chase to make new instruments sound like 300 year old instruments is counter productive in the long run. After all, these precious few were new at one time and now have the modification of time, adjustments apparently without regard to the time and materials necessary, and being played upon by the elite.

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 1:38 pm Post subject:

I had an interesting discussion with Bob Bein once about del Gesus in which he pointed out that del Gesu probably couldn't have made it today as a new maker because the people who are spending money on new violins don't have the chops to handle one. They don't necessarily need or appreciate what a really great violin has to offer.

It might be somewhat like trying to sell a Maserati to a family of five for their daily use. Every player thinks he's a wonderful artist of the best quality, of course, but what most new violin customers actually end up buying is something that is, above all else, easy to use. With a broad range of potential comes a certain twitchiness, and the associated necessity to closely control one's playing tightly. Less experienced players can experience that as merely unstable and unsatisfying. (I hear that race cars have the same problem for inexperienced drivers).
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ctviolin · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:16 pm Post subject:

ctviolin · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:29 pm Post subject:

"Violin plate tuning and weight correlation."

I'm voting no.

There is no such static thing, no such number available to the maker to use with regularity or with formularity. Although there is a finished number there is no formula to compute it.
The various differing materials used, will guarantee that every violin is going to essentially fall into a category of its own, in that it's plate and the plate weight, is going to have to be a result of its (the violins) individual characteristics.
What are the materials used?
What country did they come from?
How old and where from the tree were they cut?
How were they dried?
What is the curvature of the finished pate?
What is the thickness of the plate?
And how do those variables coexist?
No single mathematical formula for this particular.
Not that there isn't an answer, there's just not a single, workable, or generic formula there, to arrive at one.
It's a true variable
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