Violin Forum/Message Board

[R Mac]

I have just read WW Oaks "A Review of Ancient and Modern Violin Making"

It can be found here http://archive.org/stream/reviewofancienta014212mbp#page/n11/mode/2up

Does anyone know anything about this guy? Much of what he said makes sense, but the overall effect of the book is sort of like a sales brochure. He claims to understand a great deal, and to be able to get reproducible good results, but he never gives us any "nuts and bolts" about what he was doing.

Mac

[ctviolin]

[ctviolin]

And I do mean about the nuts and bolts of the game.
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[R Mac]

Craig,

The book is listed on one of those disc collections of out-of-print stuff that folks sell on Ebay. Since those things are composed almost entirely of texts that are online already, I googled up the text and read it.

I am sort of wondering about Oaks in a historical sense. Much of what he says seems reasonable to me....Perhaps a bit ahead of his time (1899). I wonder if he had any effect on the craft, or if he was thought of as an iconoclastic nut.

I searched about briefly, and could not find any other works by him or even any criticism.

Mac

[Michael Darnton]

He's the guy who suggested that violin tops should be made of maple. I remember, after reading that, desperately trying to purge my mind of anything I'd picked up in the book.

One of the reasons I started writing articles for the Guild of American Luthiers around 1990 was that the state of printed information on violin making was dire (and there was no internet), and the fuel of the business was myths and amateur publications like Oakes'. I'd had excellent training then, six years in two good shops, so I wanted to start sharing so that prospective makers wouldn't have to read people like Oakes.

At that time, I don't think anyone had ever done what I was doing: a professional maker writing quarterly about how professional makers really did things. A lot of my friends thought I'd become the enemy, revealing secrets of the trade--that's how closed things were at the time.
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[ctviolin]

[actonern]

"....Ahh! those were interesting days for (amateur @/or self taught) violin makers, I think!..."

So true! When I made my first instrument, around 1982, all I had was Harry Wake and Heron Allen. I remember reading in Heron Allen that prior to gluing the plates to the rib cage the maker was to size the gluing surface with glue, and then take a hot iron and blacken the glue. Remember thinking boy, these violin makers DO have unique methods!

It's hard to appreciate just how peachy we have it now... sort of how its hard to appreciate just how amazing digital cameras are unless you started with wet collodion plates.

E

[Michael Darnton]

[R Mac]

[R Mac]

Michael,

It looks like we were both writing at the same time.

The thing that I think sets Oaks "ahead of his time" is not that he wanted to apply science to fiddles. Lots of folks were (and still are) trying that. Rather, it is that he seemed to be saying that good craftsmanship and a sensitivity for variation in wood was the Way; rather than seeking after lost recipes, rare old wood, and other magic bullets.

Mac

[Michael Darnton]

I'll check him out, but I have to warn you that before around 1985, the printing of Charles Beare's book about the Stradivari Exhibition (and before that, Sacconi's book, which is in a special class of its own), which started a wave of books written by actual experts, virtually none of the people who wrote violin books knew as much about violins as most violin making students learn in school today. As late as 1993 I bought a splashy new violin expertise book by a "noted" author, published by a specialist violin book house in Italy, that illustrates "classical Italian" violins that were mostly fakes.

There are only three standouts before that time: the two Hill books, on Stradivari, and the Guarneri family, both of which are landmarks and nearly everything in them still holds, and Sandys and Forster's "History of the Violin", which is notable for what it says about English makers and the Forster family. Otherwise, you could throw the whole library in the trash and miss just about nothing that was factual. The level of myth and BS in this business is absolutely mind-boggling.

When I started at B&F, the first thing I learned was that almost every bit of "information" I'd picked up by reading was wrong in some way, and that while having read most of what was in print I thought I had a handle on it, in reality I was totally uninformed and misinformed, in the grandest possible way.
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[ctviolin]

[Michael Darnton]

Overlapping writing, again. :-)

On the wood topic, I'll say something. I've made about 200 violins. Unlike most makers having started in the old violin business and seen what types of wood makers had made great violins out of, I've never rejected a piece of wood that wasn't physically damaged. In that time, I've replaced tops for various other reasons, but not once because the violin didn't turn out well. The one time I wanted to, the dealer I took it too suggested that I was wrong, and sold the violin within a couple of weeks.

I've used wood that was too heavy, wood that was too light, wood with ugly grain, wood with ugly texture (a top that was like soggy pith, and made a wonderful violin, really. Subsequently a restorer told me he'd found this type of texture in a lot of old violins while working on them, and it hadn't seemed to matter there, either). I have noted tonal trends that I didn't personally want to follow (Engelmann--lots of makers use it and like it; I wasn't excited by its aggressive open quality). One of the reasons I've switched entirely to a closer examination of structure vs tone is the complete lack of seriously meaningful magical (or horrible) results from messing with wood and graduation.

I think the magic of wood is greatly oversold. It's main fascination with makers seems to be that (surprise) they have found ways to measure its physical attributes. In violin pseudoscience that which can be measured automatically becomes "important"; that which you can't, "unimportant".
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[Chet Bishop]

"In violin pseudoscience that which can be measured automatically becomes "important"; that which you can't, "unimportant". "

Things are very similar in that respect across the board in life. In actual practice (real life), the intangibles and unmeasurables tend to be pretty vital, as well.
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[L P Reedy]

I bought a copy of Oaks' book many years ago. Didn't find anything useful in it and I get a little something from almost every such book. I agree with CT in wondering about his production. I've never heard of him other than the book. Walter Mayson wrote a book around that time which is specific to a particular making style in England. Not a great book, but I have worked on and played a fiddle that he actually made. It was also not great but not that bad.
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I agree wholeheartedly with Michael about wood. I have used at least five species of maple of all qualities and at least three of spruce, as well as some hemlock. Some of the maple and the hemlock I cut myself. Most of the spruce, including a board from Austria, came from local lumberyards. I would defy anyone to play the instruments and tell me what woods were involved. I have rejected pieces for large knots but not much else.