Now that I have an acceptable piece of wood it is time to get back (no pun intended) to work. The workflow is the same as before:
- Flatten one side of the maple plank.
- Trace the outline using the rib assembly as a template.
- Rough in the arching and establish the purfling platform.
- Finalize the outline.
- Cut the purfling channel and install the purfling.
The purfling job came out quite nicely! The next step is to cut the sgusciatura and finalize the outside arching.
Very nice!!! Now we flip it over and gouge out the inside. While the top has a pretty much uniform thickness throughout, the back has varying thicknesses. Thickest in the central region and gradually getting thinner out to the lungs. This graduation pattern is very important for the overall tone of the completed instrument. I use the general pattern taken from the original Provigny Strad on which the particular model is based. At this stage I leave it a little thick (about 5mm in the middle gradually going to 3.2 mm in the lungs). I will vibrate the back to help me take it down to the final dimensions (I will talk more about this in the next post).
The back is done and tuned. We will now tune the top.
