Compare this work to the work of other great arts.  A student painter has to learn how to handle a brush, see how colors blend, gracefully create lines, and still he or she is not Picasso.  A dancer has to train and get in shape, learn various techniques/moves, create a routine, and still work very hard before they can strive for the level of Mikhail Baryshnikov.  A musician will spend countless hours learning to read music, how to play all the notes on the instrument, then the succession of those notes to learn a piece, and even then the musicality and phrasing of a piece takes more practice and dedication.  The reason I bring this up isn’t to judge how my violin is turning out compared to other student or learning endeavors but to point out that at some point in the process of learning an art, a lot of hard repetitive work has to be done.  The basics are one step and drilling is another.  Once you have a fingering and idea for a passage of music you can drill it or use practice techniques like drones to work it out.  At this point in my violin I’ve started a lot of various projects or steps in the process.  I consider it a spot where I’ve already covered all the new material and have an idea of what to do; it’s just a lot of hours of work ahead to get it done.  I’m working on the scroll very carefully, I have to repeat what has already been done with one half of the ribs with corner blocks, I’m graduating the back the same way I’m did the top, and now that the practice bass bar went well I’ve moved on to fitting the better piece of wood for the real bass bar.

So I’ve titled this week’s update “grunt work.”  When you think about it, at some point you just have to sit down and get the job done and that’s what I’m doing.  This entire time I’ve tried to judge how long each part of the process will take me.  Some things have gone right on schedule and some things have taken much longer.  Thinking back, the arching of the plates seemed to drag on forever, but so does that silly G major scale (and arpeggio) right?  When I think of grunt work I have a mental image of repetitive physical labor.  The reason I’m probably guided toward this idea this week is I spent a lot of time trying to get the back plate graduated.  I have a large blister on my thumb from gripping the finger plane too hard (I’ll work on that) but because I’m now working with maple, the wood is chipping less smoothly and is harder to cut quickly.  I’m not too far off from a final scraping but it was a lot of repetitive motion that just has to happen to get the job done.

In general I wouldn’t say I’m frustrated with the process but I’m coming to realize what it takes to separate a good maker and a great one.  I was explaining this long project to a few new faces this past week and they were amazed at just the idea of making an instrument.  One person described me as a sculptor but I’m creating a tool instead of something that stands for just visual pleasure in most cases.  And I hope the final product will stand for some aesthetic value as well as aural for the player and listener.  I’m still drawn to the artistic possibilities with instrument making as well as the “scientific” ones with acoustics.  For as monotonous as it can seem it is still a calming and rewarding endeavor.

As for pictures this week I only have a few.  I left off last week with the lining and imbedding them into the corner blocks of the rib structure.  Now that the c-bouts are done I can show the imbedding a little better visually.  Mr. Belote had some homemade clamps to glue the lining down without breaking the ribs.  A lot tools, such as scrapers, can be homemade and these are just one example.  Notice the darker color of willow and how slightly the strips are pushed into the blocks.

From here I’ll keep scraping and cutting away.  We’ll see how much of the grunt stuff I can get out of the way to get closer to closing the box!