Violin Forum/Message Board

Michael Darnton · Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 9:23 am Post subject:

Thanks, guys.

Corners too wide, Don, not too square. When the corner is wide and the purfling is too near the edge, the purfling doesn't close before you get to the end of the corner. As you either narrow the corner or increase the purfling distance from the edge, the point where the tip of the purfling closes moves farther and farther back away from the tip of the corner. Stradivari moved the outer bout purfling away from the edge to get the end of the beesting where he wanted it, but you can only do that so much before it starts to look silly. :-)

Mat Roop · Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 12:21 am Post subject:

Can't get past this post without commenting... No excuse now for a bad corner!!
Michael, thanks for that wonderful explanation. It always amazes me how thoroughly you have thought things thru... and can explain the logic of it.
Greatly appreciated!!... Mat

Michael Darnton · Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 10:26 am Post subject:

Take a look at the corners on this one, and you can see what happens when the corners are too short and wide. Sacconi went out of his way to turn the purfling inwards on it, and probably went even a bit far--the purfling points are a bit short relative to the corner length. Notice how far he wandered from the outer edges of the corner! This is the type of thing you see more on cellos, with their very large corners.

http://www.tarisio.com/pages/auction/auction_item.php?Sale_ID=3039&ID=17555

Mat, I try to go through this process with everything: figure out what the original design intent was, then go look to see how various people accomplished that, or failed to, and determine which solution looks best. Then I concentrate on that aspect in building, until I feel like I have control of it. That's how I end up with little collections of things, like this one:
http://darntonviolins.com/images2/Buttons.jpg

Janito · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2007 Posts: 114 Location: USA

For the less acute bend, stopping the knife cuts about 1/2-3/4" from the point and 'rolling' a gouge edge to the desired tip (or sting) can work well.

violinarius · Member Joined: 14 Dec 2007 Posts: 171

If you are interested in corners The Strad magazine has in the May 2009 issue the following: "Trade Secrets--Peter Goodfellow on controlling the C-rib corner shape".

http://www.thestrad.com/hNextIss.asp

Here is a very nice article on corners by Michael Darnton.

http://www.darntonviolins.com/corners.php

John Cadd · Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:13 pm Post subject: purfling corners

Glad to see the comment about a concave cut on the end of the purfling.I drew out a very enlarged diagram of a picture and used fine compasses to "walk along the edges "of each layer.Then I did a flattened out version which illustrates what the concave shape is exactly. What a quality answer you got with all those photos thrown in.
Your cup runneth over.