An exciting part of violin making is placing the rib structure on the back and fronts and marking out the outline. This is done once they have been planed perfectly flat. One has to take into consideration the grain of the wood and decide where to place the instrument to maximize its beauty.
Once the rib structure is clamped along the centre joint I lightly mark around the ribs with a sharp scriber and then with a hard pencil using a brass spacer which was kindly given to me by my friend and fellow violin maker Patrick Jordan in Canada.
In fact some of my really good tools have been sent to me by Patrick including my prized Lie-Nielson plane that I used to trim the rib ends in the last video!
Once marked the outline is sawn out and one begins the rough carving developing a relationship with the wood and feeling its texture. I love to listen to the sound the gouge makes as it gently guides itself through the wood. One can tell an enormous amount about the future sound of the instrument through this listening, although I would never attempt to put it into words, as it is simply an abstract interpretation and the accumulation of years of experience.
After the rough carving the outline is neatly rasped to the pencil line, again ensuring the curves flow. Finally the edge thickness is gouged and filed down. One leaves the inner C bout edges slightly thicker to compensate for the optical illusion of them looking thinner. The corners are also left thicker to allow for wear which happens naturally over the decades.
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