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Michael Darnton
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 Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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Working without a template is winging it even if you have a thousand years of experience. You'll notice Stradivari, with all of his experience still used forms, f-hole templates, and a scroll and neck template. One can't really appreciate the precision of his arching until one puts a template on it.
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Janito
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Michael Darnton wrote: | | Working without a template is winging it even if you have a thousand years of experience. You'll notice Stradivari, with all of his experience still used forms, f-hole templates, and a scroll and neck template. One can't really appreciate the precision of his arching until one puts a template on it. |
I am separating 'aesthetic' from 'tonal' buckets. I am talking about the latter, rather than the former (which likely have more rigid boundaries determined by local conventions).
A person's quantification of the degree of 'winging it' that is tolerable from a tonal perspective will vary with the extent of past experience of the boundaries of futility.
The danger lies in a 3rd party observer not appreciating these aspects when quantifying degrees of 'winging it'. |
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actonern
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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Again, just speculation, but speculation with what I think to be defensible deductive reasoning...
The artifacts still available to us in the Strad museum reveal a man who relied on templates for a lot of his design work.
As Michael repeatedly points out, Cremonese cross arches can be compared to a curtate cycloid template at any point and their correspondence to the template is uncanny. Anyone who hasn't tried this just should.
If there was a division of labor in these shops, templates are a very efficient means to guide less experienced workers to achieve the design goal.
So, even if the Master could whip off an arch by eye that mirrors the cycloid... why couldn't it have also occurred to him to delegate this job to junior staff, who didn't have the skill to do it by eye, but who could sure follow a template.
This may not have been a sweat shop, but consider this... In the Hill book on Stradivari, there is an account by Arisi to the effect that Giovanni Battista Volumier, Director of the Court Music of the King of Poland, went to Cremona in 1715 by special order of the King, to await the completion of 12 violins which had been ordered by Stradivari. He was there "THREE MONTHS" and then took the instruments back with him.
Admittedly, this fellow was there to await "the completion" of 12 instruments, which could have been started long before he came, but it certainly conveys a sense of an active shop where brisk work was going on.
If any of this is true, I would expect that the Master would use his time as efficiently as possible... doing what he did best, and that which was beyond the skill of his fellow workers. Like design of decorated instruments, monitoring quality control, giving direction on problems of execution in the shop, managing customer relations, selecting and buying lumber, mentoring apprentices, varnishing, etc.
Templates would be a very useful means to help maintain quality control, and even though arching templates havent been found among his remaining artifacts doesn't mean they weren't used, or even very likely used.
Just an opinion! |
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Michael Darnton
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Janito wrote: | | A person's quantification of the degree of 'winging it' that is tolerable from a tonal perspective will vary with the extent of past experience of the boundaries of futility. |
You think this, yes. But you are wrong. If you actually tried it seriously and developed the concept to it's fullest you would see how wrong you are, but I am not going to try to talk you into something your personality rebels against. And make no mistake, without the evidence you are reluctant to collect, this is an emotional decision on your part, not a rational one.
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Janito
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Michael Darnton wrote: |
I am not going to try to talk you into something your personality rebels against. |
| Michael Darnton wrote: | | And make no mistake, without the evidence you are reluctant to collect, this is an emotional decision on your part, not a rational one. |
I think we agree more than we disagree - words may be getting in the way. |
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pmccombs
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Posts: 87
Location: Utah
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Michael Darnton wrote: | | As actonern says, if you study Cremonese violins you will see that the whole thing is a drafting exercise from one end to the other, made almost entirely of sections of circles. The circles are so clearly there that it has allowed people to develop plans for drawing your own accurate outlines. What I would ask skeptics about arching is if the whole violin is a design exercise, why would the designer suddenly get to one single aspect, the arching, and say "Just wing it?" He wouldn't of course. |
I hadn't considered this point, which is a little surprising since I once did this very exercise. The Heron-Alan book contains an algorithm for drawing a violin, which is deficient in a few points that are easy to discover and correct. I was able to do it:
From that drawing I built this violin which is all "math and engineering," I suppose:
I had forgotten about that experiment of mine. All you need is a ruler and compass. To draw the arches you can make cycloids by piercing a hole close to the edge of a disk, putting the pencil tip in that hole, and rolling the disk along a straight edge. You get different curves depending on the radius and circumference of the disk.
Anyway, no doubt even the the oldest makers would have had access to those tools. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if Stradivari drafted his designs carefully, and I'm inclined to agree that this argument is a good one in favor of templates.
There are more makers who produced famous violins than Stradivari, though, and one of my favorites is del Gesu, particularly what have been called the "prison" guarnerii. Some of those are highly acclaimed, and my first violin was based on a 1742 pattern that wasn't even symmetrical, if I recall.
If one of these fiddles, sometimes called "rough," can still produce an excellent sound, then it stands to reason that tone perhaps is more a product of other factors. |
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actonern
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know if you subscribe to the Strad magazine or have any posters of big shot violins that are that are included about twice a year.
I was setting up to copy the Plowden Del Gesu... making mold outlines and so on...
On a whim I tried some software generated c. cycloid overlays on the provided arching diagrams on the poster.
I just went with the software generated templates... They were VERY close, and there is some distortion in the original plates, especially around the soud post position, where post pressure over the centuries has pressed the plates away from their original shape.
Quentin Playfair, a Toronto based maker, originally made the "discovery" of c. cycloids and cremonese archings, and he claims that this arching system extended far beyond Stradivari's shop... it was very widespread. That's another thing that for me suggests the use of templates. How likely is it that all of these workmen, gouge in hand, according to their own "muse" were making archings so similar - with nothing like a template???
E |
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pmccombs
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Location: Utah
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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| actonern wrote: | I don't know if you subscribe to the Strad magazine or have any posters of big shot violins that are that are included about twice a year.
I was setting up to copy the Plowden Del Gesu... making mold outlines and so on...
On a whim I tried some software generated c. cycloid overlays on the provided arching diagrams on the poster.
I just went with the software generated templates... They were VERY close, and there is some distortion in the original plates, especially around the soud post position, where post pressure over the centuries has pressed the plates away from their original shape.
Quentin Playfair, a Toronto based maker, originally made the "discovery" of c. cycloids and cremonese archings, and he claims that this arching system extended far beyond Stradivari's shop... it was very widespread. That's another thing that for me suggests the use of templates. How likely is it that all of these workmen, gouge in hand, according to their own "muse" were making archings so similar - with nothing like a template???
E |
I'd really like to subscribe to Strad... I need those posters.  But it's so awfully expensive.
What software did you use for cycloids? |
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actonern
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| Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/ccycloid/
It's free...
And the Strad magazine... yes it's expensive, and from a maker's perspective has lots of "fluff" dealing with things like clearing violins through airports and so on (not "bench" relevant stuff exactly.) But it also has a lot of inspiring photography, interesting articles, and expensive is a relative thing... an annual subscription is about the same as 2 rounds of golf... |
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Chet Bishop
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Location: Forest Grove, Oregon
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Carnyx
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Joined: 16 May 2009
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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I have tryed to open the .dxf file with librecad (http://librecad.org/cms/home.html) but it doesn't work.
Does it work for you? |
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violinarius
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Posts: 171
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 10:29 am Post subject: |
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I want to throw out there a different way of looking at an old thought, and that thought is that violins improve with age.
Instead I think it better to say that 'all' violins change with age.
Then the question becomes one of, how much, and in what direction, for each individual instrument.
As for Michael's approach of working precisely on the archings, and loosely on the graduation, this seems to me to be an economical approach to making.
If it was discovered that close was 'close enough' for graduating, then why spend time and effort on something that was not going to reap dividends.
If instruments improved by spending time and effort on arching, then this would be the place to concentrate one's working capital. |
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Jacob
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Joined: 13 Jan 2013
Posts: 20
Location: Cape Town
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| violinarius wrote: | I want to throw out there a different way of looking at an old thought, and that thought is that violins improve with age.
Instead I think it better to say that 'all' violins change with age.
Then the question becomes one of, how much, and in what direction, for each individual instrument.
As for Michael's approach of working precisely on the archings, and loosely on the graduation, this seems to me to be an economical approach to making.
If it was discovered that close was 'close enough' for graduating, then why spend time and effort on something that was not going to reap dividends.
If instruments improved by spending time and effort on arching, then this would be the place to concentrate one's working capital. |
I may be wrong - I hope I'm not - but Michael's philosophy, if it mirrors those of the Cremonese makers, is based upon two principles: first, structural stability, and second, tonal efficiency. All the stuff about the longitudinal arch of the top, the curtate cycloids and all that, is to strike an efficient balance between structural sturdiness and flexibility. I've seen/heard many examples of reworked fiddles which sounded absolutely fabulous for a few months, until they collapsed. On the opposite side of the spectrum you find the commercial Stainer knock-offs of the 1800's which could survive a nuclear blast, nevermind a few strokes of a bow. A good violin is the best example of an almost impossible compromise. That's why thicknessing by itself is at best a cherry on top. Without a structurally and tonally meaningful arching, thicknessing (or plate-tuning) is a meaningless exercise. |
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