AboutAl Dzina Expertise I can answer questions about violin and guitar making and restoration. I will not answer questions about playing these instruments, because I am a maker, not a player.
Experience I was trained in violin making in Germany and have been working at this craft for sixty years.
Question Dear Al,
Happy New Year to you!
1. I wonder the working process a violin maker will have to follow to open a violin for repair work inside the bout, say, repairing 2 front cracks. How does he open the violin?
2. Does he also use any kind of chemical substance/solvant or hot steam to soften glue to easily open the front plate?
3. Do different kind of woods for trimmings effect the tone/playability/response of the violin at the end or just only different in cost, weight and durability?
4. What are good/bad points (apart from its cost/weight/durability points of view) of different woods used for making a finger board and trimmings (ebony, boxwood, maple, snakewood)?
5. Is it an imply knowledge or a normal practice that mostly good quality violins will be mostly made from good quality spruce and flamed maple by known/unknown good violin makers (either a violin bears a label or no label)?
6. How to roughly identify a good quality maple/spruce (capatian, canadian, chinese, himalayan) and its originality?
Thank you in advance for you valuable answers.
Best regards,
Ruthsdis
Answer Dear Ruthsdis;
Happy New Year to you as well.
Let me say right up front, you sure know how to ask the tough questions. But I love a challange so I shall attempt to answer as much and as well as possible.
1. The removal of the front or back of a violin is very simple. All you need is a sharpe pointed knife. You probe the point of the knife carefully around the perimeter of the instrument for a weak spot in the glue. You them carefully move the blade around the entire glue joint and all of a sudden the top or back will pop off.
2. Chemicals or solvents are never used. Some people use sream but one must be very careful or you could damage the varnish finnish. The method as shown in No.1 is the accepted method.
3. Different types of wood used on trimmings has no effect on tone or playabilty. Except possibly the tailpiece, which has a small effect on what is called sustain. They all will have an effect on cost, weight and durability as you have already mentioned.
4. I think that you pretty much answered this question yourself. Ebony is the choice for fingerboards because of close grain and very hard surface, which will resist the abrasive action of the strings.
5. I'm not sure that I fully understand this question. But at any rate here goes. Spruce has been used because ot the acoustic properties. Maple for the rest of the structure because of strength. Well flamed maple does nothing for the tone, but it sure does look beautiful.
6. I feel it is very difficult to verify the origin of the various types of spruce. Only a wood dealer that handles the raw wood over a period of time will develope the skill required to tell the difference between one and the other
Regards Al:
