Fixing Masakichi No.3010

February 2006
I was wondering how can I fix the Masakichi No.3010. This kind of fixing seemed pretty difficult. One day I tried to push ribs (end pin area) by my hands, but they didn’t move even 1mm. I felt it was impossible to push and glue at the same time just by human hands. So I tried to invent one fixing tool.
At first put a kind of pad on each lower corners of the violin, and using long metal screws and butterfly nuts, it can push ribs back inside of sound box. Sorry for the poor drawing, because I don’t have this tool anymore. I already threw ay such a useless tool ^^;)

As you can see in this drawing, by screwing the lower wood plate pushes back ribs and lower block which were completely sticking out of sound box.
According to my plan, this seemed perfect solution. I made this tool immediately, and tried.

At first put two pads on each corner and get ready to turn butterfly nuts … but even this first set up was already difficult. Corners are pretty slippery how many times I tried to set up tool, it went off from the violin. It waaaas frustrating! I had to try many times…
Finally I could set up this somehow and started to turn nuts and screws…
It was supposed to go back to inside of body, but the reality was not! The ribs went back into the body little bit (about few mm)but after that it didn’t move at all. How much I turn up screws, it didn’t move anymore...and I was anxious if I did too much, it might break around corners. So I gave up and glued block and back. Well, this picture is after the fixing… I don’t have the picture of before the fixing, unfortunately.

Even though it ’s still little bit sticking out of the body, it’s muuuch better than before.
Then, how about the sound??? For me, there was not much difference before and after..hehehe. It might be because of players skill and ability of hearing nice tones though. ^^;)

Receiving 2nd Masakichi Violin

So, I bought the 2nd Masakichi Violin(No.3010), even though I had already two violins! When I received it, the case was really old and looked broken. When I opened the case, it had old smell of stuff. You know, smell like inside of garage?! ^^;) But I like it, because it makes me imagine it was sleeping in a garage for a long while and finally it could get out of there! And destined to came to my place...

(The label is really old and it's almost going away from violin)

It's varnish was really old and weak. When I scratch by my finger nail, I could easily remove it... It means I have to be careful not to damage. And also it had a crack on back side and ribs and lower block(which contains end pin usually) were getting out of shape of violin. It little bit difficult to explain in words... I mean, back side(lower block area) was peeled off from block, block and ribs were pulled by the tension of strings, so they were kind of distorted.

Anyway, I tried to play on this violin. I put new strings on it, and made new bridge, new pegs...etc...
Well, it's time to play!
(I was little bit anxious about the tension of strings though ^^;)
I tried to play the violin...
...
...
Waao. the sound is pretty good. (I thought)
And probably it sounds better than the other Masakichi violin.
This one doesn't sound like cheap kind of steel sound...

"OK, let's bring this to next lesson! "(Hey, you're not supposed fix it before?! )

I showed it to my teacher...she said,
"It looks pretty old this time."
Hihihi! I know!
But there were not much comment about the sound of this violin. I know, the player's technique is still not enough though...

Anyway it really looks like needs fixing. So I decided to fix it. But I didn't have any good idea about it...
I needed to think about it, for a while....
(I liked to play this violin a lot! Hihihi, these animals are my cocktails, they like to stay on my head when I play violin^^)

Getting 2nd Masakichi violin

After fixing Masakichi No.A, I was again looking internet auction.
It was February 2006
…
I didn’t have much desire to buy another violin, since I had already two violins then(made in California2004 and Masakichi No.A ). I got a information from auction, about new items which were started that day. In that information, I found a violin which looked pretty old. It was also Masakichi Suzuki violin.
This time it had a label which says “M.Suzuki 3010”.
This M.Suzuki label violin was made in a really early time of Suzuki violin, and also this No.3010 is really rare item.. the seller was explaining like this.

I thought
…
“Waaaaa, it really looks old… about 100years old?? Waaa , maybe sound is also good. And this varnish, it’s cracked but it also gives good out looking to this violin…
Hmmmm…I want it… but… I just bought Masakichi violin few weeks ago!! Hmmm, hesitation …”
With thinking this, my hand was already typing a desired price of the seller!!! Unbelievable!! I bought it!
“Aaalalala… I bought it!! What will I do with such a many violins?? It ’s third one!! Silly…”
My girlfriend of that time(now she’s my wife) also said exactly same thing to me later!! Hehehe!! ^^;)
“Well, anyway it’s my own money. I don’t bother anybody, it’s all right, right? ”
I told myself… and I was feeling I really can not resist the power of old violin’s looking…

Old violins have kind of mysterious power which we can’t resist sometimes!
Even if it was just a photo on the inter-net
….

Fixing the Masakichi violin

After I received the Masakichi No.A, I played a lot even though it had big split between back and ribs. Since my violin teacher recommended to close this big split, I was considering how to fix it. But At that time, I had almost no tools, even any clamps. So I had no idea how to fix this kind of thing.

I looked for an information about making and fixing violin. I found that fixers use kind of special glue for stringed instruments. The glue is not chemical product, but made from skin and bones of rabbit( it sounds bad, but this is really groval standard glue for luthiers). So I bought this special glue(it ’s called "NIKAWA" in Japanese).

And one more necessary thing was clamps. I didn’t know what kind of clamp is best for this, but I found a picture of special clamp to close sound box of violin on inter-net. This is actually sold at one internet shop. But it ’s kind of expensive!

So I decided to make this by myself. It seemed pretty simple and easy to make.
I bought cheap board and cut it into nice curved plates to fit the curve of violins lower and upper bouts. I couldn’t find nice hand screw like we can see in the picture, so I used 45mm long screws and butterfly type nut which I can screw by hand. But these screws were too heavy, because they had 10mm of diameter! Hihihi! It was silly to choose such thing for this. Mine was not sofisticated at all!!

Anyway I made my first fixing tool by myself. Unfortunately I already threw away it long ago, so I don’t have a picture of it.
C’est dommage… by using this pretty ugly tool, I could close the sound box successfully^^)
But the glue was kind of too thick! Hehehe! After drying it became thick white film on ribs.

Anyway, how was the sound after that? The player was feeling it’s little bit better than before, but actually he couldn’t feel much difference of it! Hehehe!

Buying a second violin

It was January,2006
I was looking at internet auction cite, I didn't have any specific desire then. I was just looking vilin section. Then I found an old violin which is made in Japan. It had no strings, no pegs. And its backside was little bit splitted from rib. Yeah, it was a junk
violin.
I felt "Maybe I can fix it."even though I had never done such a thing!
I had a feeling.
And according to the seller this violin was made by Masakichi Suzuki around WW2. It means it's already about 60y.o.
Hmmm... I want it!!
Masakichi Suzuki is a founder of Suzuki Violin co.ltd. And he made many many good violins when he started his business in
(about)1890s. (I'm not sure the exact time, but I mean it started about 100years ago.) That violin was reaaaally cheap! It was just 100$. I was wondering "Violins are such a cheap items?" Hehehe.


Anyway I was happy to get this violin. Because my first violin was made in 2004, it's still really new. And I wanted to try an "old" violin. (actually it's not even old. 60y.o. is still modern) These two violins are pretty different. As soon as I got the second violin, I set up pegs and strings. I was really impatient to play this violin so much!

I put DOMINANTE on this violin, and played...
...
oooooohhh, it sounds interestiiing.
I felt like the sound was really different from my 1st violin. But actually I think at that time i didn't have enough sence of hearing real good sound. Since I was still just a beginner then. But I was pretty happy to play this violin. Even though it was
lowest rank violin of Masakichi Suzuki.(It had a name of Masakichi Suzuki No.A. This No.A is sopposed to be out of rank 60 years ago.)

(There's no flame on its back nor on neck!)

I brought this violin to the lesson and showed to my teacher.
She said "Actually if you fix this splitted part, it might be better."
Yeh, that's right. Because I hadn't fixed that part. I was playing with one side of back(belly) opened. So much vibration and
sound were escaping from the big space.

The next work should be fixing this split...

Finishing the ribs and Lining

The next day of gluing all the ribs, I removed all the clamps and pinches, and check the result. OK, it's almost perfect except for one part. It was upper block part. Since I thought it's enough to glue by pinching that part, I didn't use gluing pad and F-clamp. But that was bad idea. I could see little space between rib and upper block.

So I had to remove rib of this part and glue it again. It's good to find this kind of mistake pretty early, and fix it. Because later and later it becomes more difficult to fix and troublesome. So, I was kind of lucky to find it soon.

(Finish shaping of corner ribs too. It was kind of good result ^^)

After fixing this part, it's time to complete the width of ribs!As you can see, ribs are wider than mold which is about 30 to 31mm. The first thing to do is shave this excess part by plane. But as you know, ribs are thin and they have strong flames usually. This flame part is quite easy to cause cracks by planing. At this step, I made mistakes in the past. It's really easy to make cracks and losing proper width of ribs. So we really have to be careful to plane these excess ribs. Once you lost proper width, you have to wood powder with glue on it. This fixing method helps a lot for beginner, but it's visible later. So we'd better to be careful^^)

OK, shaving excess part of ribs is completed! This time there was no mistake! Now I don't need thick mold anymore. So I remove the one of back side plate mold. I didn't glue blocks onto backside mold, it was quite easy to remove it. If we put too much glue when we glue blocks, it makes so much difficulties of removing mold.

It's time to prepare the lining material~~~
Usually for lining material we use spruce which is same as table(top). But I've heard that Stradivarius used much softer lining material for lining. It was not just a spruce. (I don't know what it is called in English, but in Japanese it's YANAGI tree.) Usually spruce is cut from pine trees or conifers right? I don't know the tree's name in English so much, but anyway he used pretty soft material for lining.
I wanted to use this kind of material, but unfortunately I can't find YANAGI at any material shops. Maybe there's at Japanese wood shop, but Japanese woods are quite different from European woods, so I don't want use it. This time there was not choice for this, so I used normal spruce. But someday!

Preparation of lining is like one of rib. We should make proper thickness(about 1.8-2.0mm). And then soak into water and bend by hot Iron.


Spruce seems way softer than maple and it seems easy to bend, right? But it's not true. Sometimes 2mm thickness spruce is tougher than maple ribs. And it also easy to get cracks. Eventhough we make cracks, it becomes invisible later, but I can't stand it. Eventhough we can hide such a small mistake by gluing but I think it influences to the result of violin's sound. Maybe(this is just my imagination) lining is also important to transfer the vivlation which is given from table side to upper and lower side of ribs. Because lining's fiber is straight all through the ribs. And spruce's speed of transfering vivlation is much faster than that of maple(?) But it's just my imagination, I can't garuntee it.
Anyway what I want to say is we should be careful for bending this too. Hehehe, it's always just be careful! For violin making it's always be required.


The difficult point is to make exact same length as ribs. I have to match the length of lining from block to block without any space. If we make some space between rib and lining, well, the result is not great. What I want is beautiful sound, without annoying noise! So bending, matching the shape and length, gluing, it took almost all daylong. But the result, I'm pretty satisfied...
Today's point is...
*Be patient! Don't get Frustlated and don't make more mistake!

Gluing other part of ribs(4th)

Since I had so much difficlties of gluing C-part, I was anxious about the result. ext day when I removed all small pinches, well, it's not that bad. It was ALMOST perfect. Except for just one part which was not enough clamped to block. But this part will be OK, because I'll put lining wood inside of this part. So anyway this part's block will be removed later.

So this time it's gluing the rest of ribs. But I had to be careful. Because thickness of treble side and bass side and plus upper and lower, allmost all the ribs are different. Of course I made different thickness of ribs previously. So just being careful to choose which one was which part, and which side is top side, which is outer... Bending process is same as last time. Just being carefull not to burn and not to make a crack.

Oops, before writing about bending, there was one more process I had to do. It's shaping the corner blocks! It was still not curved yet, so I completed the shape of them. By separating shaping corner blocks, they didn't get distorted! Yahoooy.


Ok, let's go back to the gluing process. This time I didn't prepare gluing pads, because I have already two sets of pads which I made in the past. So this time I just used them again. After bending all the ribs, I put them on mold by small pinches to make them rest and get new shape. At this process, small holes on mold really helped a lot! At first I thought that maybe they are not necessary this time.
But actually they were really helpful to clamp. (Usually I make just one or two holes along the curve of mold.) So I didn't have to remove ribs from mold even when I glued them. Just removed two or three pinches and lifted up ribs little bit was enough to glue them.
It was quite easy! It's unbelievable I had so much trouble the day before!! ^^;)
This process took just 1 or 2 hours(usually it takes 3-4hours).


This time's good point was...
* I made many small holes on mold for pinches.
That's it! It's a pretty simple point, isn't it? Hehehe.