Vannes

The city Vannes is located near the central city (Rennes) of Bretagne in France. This city is about 1 hour by car from Rennes.
I went to there in summer of 2005 and 2006. There are always many tourists from all over the world to this city.
The city was surrounded by old old walls that were defending this town from enemies in Mid-century, probably.
The animated area of this town is still inside of the walls, so we have to pass the gate to enter the center of the town. This is pretty interesting for me, because there's no city in my country which is surrounded by walls like this.
In Japan, in Mid-century, castles were surrounded by huge walls and towns were also surrounding the castles. So, government was always protected by walls and town.
But in Europe, usually town is also surrounded by walls like this town. The center is always a church.

watercolor, F4

In this town, many houses have colorful columns in outside of walls. This is pretty.
And many houses are really crooked, it looked like they are almost turning down. But even though they are crooked, people are living as if it’s quite normal. This is really unbelievable thing in my country, but it’s interesting.

I found two crooked old houses, in the edge of animated area. They didn’t have colorful columns, they had really old natural wood columns that looked great for me. They looked like they are managing little private hotels. I liked the colors of these houses. And the small narrow road was also crooked and filled with pebbles. I tried to make a nostalgic atmosphere on my picture by using just few colors…

(Vannes is here.)

Just a little bit of difference...

Causes huge difference of sound of violin.
Recently, I was feeling that my 3rd violin Guarneri del gesu copy has little bit less volume of sound. Compared to my lttle bit old violin Marengo Romanus Rinaldi(1895), I feel like my 3rd one has smaller sound...

In the past I tried to get bigger sound, I tried few things.
At first, I got an information that how to twist strings on pegs. Usually, when we equip strings, we twist strings on peg from inside to outside of pegbox. Inside of pegbox, strings look like it goes slightly outside of pegbox. This is to prevent peg’s turning back and loosing string’s tension. But according to the information which I read, when strings are twisted on pegs slightly inside of peg box, strings’ vibrations are not disturbed by anything. And they say in this way violin sounds really better. Shortly, the angle of string is the point.
I tried this. After that, hmm, sound became little bit bigger, I thought. But not enough.
Second, it was how to equip a chin rest. Even by how to put a chin rest changes sound of violin a lot (probably most violinists know it). This is often used in the instrument shops. When lower sound is too small, loosen the tension of left side leg of chin rest, tighten the other leg. When treble sound is small, do the opposite. My case, treble was small, so I did the latter method. Certainly, it was kind of effective. But still not enough.

I was wondering, is this a limit of this violin? Before I felt its sound was much more powerful. I thought there must be something.
I tried to move the position of the bridge, just in case. We cannot move a bridge toward the fingerboard nor tail piece. Because it changes length of string from nut to bridge, and it influences a playing. But anyway I tried to move bridge in these directions. But there was not much change. Suddenly I thought about move it in the direction of treble string side. The sound changed so much!! It changed astonishingly. Probably the foot of bridge was not above bass bar before. Suddenly lower sound started to sound with big vibration.
And thanks to lower sound’s volume up, treble sound became bigger and more beautiful.

There’s not much difference from the original position. Maybe 1 mm? Even with this small difference causes such a huge difference of the sound. I thought I knew this violin pretty well, but there’s still things to learn… I think there’s few things to try before we give up on our own violins ^^) (of course same for other stringed instruments) Now my 3rd violin has really powerful and beautiful sound, and it's fun to play it. The thing is... my playing ability though^^;)

Arching

Recently, my 4th violin making doesn’t look like proceeding. But, little by little, I’m still making it ^^;). For the moment, I’m in the making of back’s arch.
The other day, I made arch guides at first, they‘re copied from the poster of The Strad. I don’t have to make completely same as Stradivarius, but I want to make it close to the actual instrument.^^)

Making the arch is pretty interesting, it determines the outlook of the violin so much.
This time I’m using only small planes to make arch. It’s to make it carefully. It’s slow, but this arching is important factor to determine the outlook and sound. (Stradivari’s violin is well calculated, its volume of sound box is pretty important). But of course it should be beautiful too. To make people enjoy to look it.


But using only small planes is kind of tiring, and it makes water balls on my fingers.
Ouch!! the violinist’ s delicate finger got hurt, shit! ^^;) (I’m kidding, hehehe)

(It’s becoming violin shape. But this is still 50% of this process)

Sometimes,

I draw and paint a picture...

It's not related to making violin though. ^^;)

watercolor、Arche(26cm×36cm)

I drew a picture of "Le Chateau de Josselin" where I visited last winter.
(Chateau de Josselin, Bretagne, France)

There is a small town Josselin near by the central city(Rennes) of Bretagne in France. And there is a nice atmosphere castle in this small town. Did this castle dominant this area in the past? The town has also pretty nice atmosphere which reminds me the movie "Lord of the ring". Many houses have really small entrance, looked like Hobits were living there.

The castle is standing next to the small river, and I looked for a nice point of view. When I went to the upper side of the river, I found the castle's reflection on the surface of river was beautiful. And there was also nice small bridge.
It was Sunday before Christmas, there was really less people, and almost all the shops were closed. But the town had still nice atmosphere. I thought there must be much more tourist in usual weekend... Only the middl age couple was walking along the river towards the castle.

Josselin is here.

Purfling 3

Finally it's time to put purfing inside of trenches which I made the other day. At first I cut purfling material into some pieces, and soak them in water. And bend them by hot iron, like making rib and linings.
Even thouhg books say "You don't have to bend purfling exactly same as outline." I have to bend it precisely. Because this time I'm using maple purfling(the center part purfling is made of maple), this type of purfling is kind of hard to bend without hot iron. Bending by hand without heat ness, it's easily get broken. White fiber type is pretty easier to bend, it's kind of elastic. Why am I using such a troublesome material? Because even though it's tough to use, I thought it's better the quality of material between back and purfling are same. Considering the effect to the sound.

Bending and shaping the corner part of purfling was pretty tough this time. I almost lost my patience, and got frustrated ^^;) So I didn't have enough energy to take a picture.

Sorry there's no photo of putting purfling inside of back this time. This is the photo after putting all the purfling. I could finish making purfling somehow. There's no photo of corner part? Hehehe, sory, for the moment I cannot show it yet. Maybe later!


My parakeet Sue is watching the result. "What do you think about the result, Ms. Sue?"
"Maybe, not bad. Better than last time."
"Merci, Madame."(^^)

Purfling 2

Since I could prepare some flat parts for perfling, now it's time to make a trench for purfling. I know most of violin makers hate this part, because maple is really hard to curve trenches, it takes so much time (just for a decoration), and if they make mistake in this step the result would be pretty poor. I wrote purfling is just a decolation above this line, actually it has also specific purpose to prevent the back's crack and split. But for most of luthiers, it feels like just a decoration during making violin! ^^;)

Making trenches, I use DREMEL as a tool.
Originally, makers use simple cutter and purfling cleaner, but it takes too much time! Hehehe. Even though somebody sais "Ah, this method is not traditional at all!", I don't care. For me, even though there is good convenient tools , cling on the old method, saying "Except for traditional method, it's a fake!" seems really stupid. Why don't they use new tools? Because they are kind of too suborned people, and like to deny new stuffs. I saw this kind of people a lot, especially in Japan. ^^;)
Some Japanese makers who say they are real professional violin maker have pretty old way of thinking. They are afraid of being taken their customers by amateur violin makers, so they are desperate to deny and criticize. From my point of view, they are pathetic though. Sorry about complaining ^^;)

Anyway, my style is accepting new things and apply them to violin making. And for me, DREMEL is really convenient and quick to advance.
Only the corner parts, I cannot use DREMEL. So I have to use "traditional method" for these parts. At first I tried to draw lines for purfling on corner parts, imagining what kind of result I will get.

Even using this kind of power tools, we still have to be careful not to make a mistake. But compared to "traditional way", it's way faster. I could finish making trench just in one day. By old method it takes about 2,3days.

Purfling 1

After cutting out the back, it's time to get ready for purfling. You know purfling?Just in case, I'm going to explain. Purfling is a decoration which you can see on oloin, and viola, violincell, which looks like just a black line along the outline of violin and so on. It looks like just a line but actually it's made of two kinds of wood, black part is ebony, and white part is maple or white fiber. Originally, white part was made of maple. But using maple for purfling is little bit difficult, so recently almost everybody uses fiber type.

At first maker makes trench depth about 1.5mm to 2.0mm along the outline of back and table, and bend purfling material and put it inside of the trench. This process is quite difficult and takes so much time! And it requires much patience!
I wonder who likes this purfling process?! Of course some people might like it, because this part shows makers woodcraft skill so much. I still don't like it so much though ^^;)

Well, to start purfling, at first I have to shave edge part of back along the outline. Because the thickness of the edge part is still 30mm, and it's way thick. I have to decrease the thickness to about 3.5 to 4mm. To remove 25mm thickness of excess wood, I use power tools, chisels, small planes,...etc.
With checking the thickness of edge often, I make desired thickness by using file.
Actually, this took much time more than my expectation, it took almost half a day.
This time I want to make my violin really close to the real Stradivari's violin, so I made the thickness of the edge pretty carefully. According to a violin making book, it sais too easily, "thickness of edge should be 4.5 to 5mm".
In the past I followed this recipe, but this thickness is pretty thick, and I felt it's decreasing the vibration of back and table so much. And checking actual thickness of Stradivari and Guarneri, I noticed they never made such thick edge in their works.
This Stradivari 1721"Kruse"'s thickness in the C-part is 3.9 to 4.3mm, and other parts are about 3.5mm.

Fiouu, I finished all around the outline thickness arrangement! Well, next step is one of the most difficult part of making violin!
(Am I saying this almost every time??)