Violin Forum/Message Board

[actonern]

Also, if the inside was hollowed out first, wouldn't that make the central ventral pin marks even more difficult to explain? If the ventral pin is the filled in leftover of a drilled out hole to help anchor the plate to the bench for arching, it could only perform this function if the outside was worked on first.

[CT Dolan]

I don't want to argue the point, and in reality I am not qualified to do so, but one thing I find peculiar about the ventral pin is that the point (very tip, actually) of the hole projects flush with the exterior of the back (or at least this is what I am led to believe is the case most often, if not all of the time). To my way of thinking, this is significant and implies that the hole is not a remnant of a means of securing the back to a bench. This does not even address the fact that the belly has no such pin (although spruce much easier to work than maple). But, even more so, what of Michael's comment regarding the location of the pin, the balance point of the back (and the relationship between this and the balance point of the belly) in the violins of del Gesu? On that matter, what is written on the subject in Biddulph's publication on the work of del Gesu?

Surely there is more going on here and I am not sure exactly what (and we may never know why these things exist), but I have no doubt that the ventral pin served a fundamental purpose, as opposed to a purely utilitarian one. These are simply my thoughts on the subject, for whatever that is worth.

[actonern]

IF the plate was held down by a metal screw, and IF the depth of the "screw" was carefully controlled to define the outermost arching height, and IF the makers would quickly work the plate down till they kissed the tip of the screw...

[CT Dolan]

That's a lot of "if" statements and, statistically speaking, the chance of them all being correct are pretty slim, but nonetheless the chance still exists. I have yet to make a real violin, so for me it is all pretty much theoretical, and I've been around long enough to know the lack of value provided by theory alone.