Voilà...

No commentaries.... ;-)

many more pictures of the finished instrument are available on my website : www.mondocellos.co.uk

The very last bit of the making of our instruments is what's called the set up - all the free standing and removable parts, some of which can be adjusted to change the sound of the instrument.
This includes the ebony work of the nut and the saddle, the peg fitting, the sound post fitting and the bridge fitting.
I have worked with my father - a retired engineer - for several months to devise a way of making beautiful professional tailpieces for cellos in the wood of my choice.
Victoria's cello is set up with one of them made in olive wood - a landmark of my home, the south of France.
The pegs were made by Philip Brown - a very talented wood turner who specialises in instruments pegs.

We use the best wood for sound post and bridge that means it is made from the best grown tone wood, best processed and worked on the split to insure stability over time.

The Painting

As part of the commission of the cello I have agreed to create a dedication for Victoria, in whose it was made.
I then told them how in awe I was of one my masters, Barack Norman - a english maker of the 18th century who used to hide his initials in intricate decorative purflings.
Inspired by this I designed a pattern, also highly inspired by imperial roman art, to pay tribute to Victoria, in which I included her initials.
I used oil paints which is the easiest to use on oil varnish but I also used some kind of thick acrylic for the gold and the silver.

Varnishing

We all the know that the purpose of the varnish, on wood in general and musical instruments in particular, is to protect it - namely from dirt and changing humidity, but also from stains such as that made by the sweat on hands (and neck in the case of violins and violas).
Whereas traditional guitar making uses french polishing techniques (spirit based varnish), we use oil based varnishes. And because we stay as close as possible to the tradition of our masters, it will never be a question of a gun to apply varnishes.
Our varnish is simply a mix of colophony, mastic and copal and linseed oil (a balanced mix giving enough elasticity to the varnish to let it work and vibrate with the wood and not crack and chip).
It is beautifully transparent as well as golden in colour. We add finely ground lake pigments - always favouring the most transparents ones - to give brown, gold, honey or red shades.

For most of our instruments - including this one - we have used varnish that we have cooked ourselves.
Each coat of varnish is being polished before the next is applied.
There is here only one coat of coloured varnish in between two coats of clear (uncoloured varnish)
Each coat is dried for two days under UV black light.

The wood treatment

It is always a bit strange to come to that point where none of the tools we used for the making are going to be used again for this instrument and a new set of tools and skills will come in.
When we were at school, the art of treating wood and varnishing and that of getting the sound out of the instrument was taught in the second year, when the wood working was the programme of the first year.
The number of techniques to treat and varnish an instrument almost equal the number of makers and restorers itself. It is a very personal skill... And the Secret of Stradivari is yet to be (re) discovered.

I accepted that UV light has a positive effect on my instruments.
Italian Masters use to hang their violins in their secadour, a construction at the top the house roof open to fresh air and day light but offering protection to direct sun light (that would have damaged the glue and distorted the wood)
Our UV cabinet with tanning tubes inside is a much less romantic but as efficient of the secadour.
Our instruments can spend as long as we can in it - the longer the better. I usually do at least 10 days.
In that special case, Douglas put the cello in the UV cabinet and waited for our son Loïc to be born.
He came a week late so by the time Douglas's paternity leave was ending, the cello had been 5 weeks in it. Wonderful.
The UV light tans the wood and gives a lovely buiscuity colour but also dries it out gently and makes the wood produce ozone that will react with other chemicals.
Then comes the Potassium Nitrite which reacts with the ozone created by the UV, darkening the wood a shade further. Next treatment is tea stain and ammonia fuming. The tea stain is only a very very strong tea with a drop of alcohol to kill mould and that applied on the wood gives more colour as the tannins contained in tea react with the ammonia. all of those treatments bring the wood to darken to a nice brown and the figure to come out without damaging the wood.

Finishing the wood work

The edge work - rounding around the edges - has been roughly started before the plates were glued to the body so to access easily the underside without damaging the ribs.

It is always the very last job, along with a few chamfers to be finished here and there, before looking at the instrument and thinking: "Et voilà... that's me done..."

Shaping the neck

The "box" is now closed together for good. It takes a long time on a cello to insure that the ribs are set on both plates where there are meant to be - sometimes slight distortions of the ribs change their shape and they are to be "persuaded" back into place. This is the only way to guarantee no loss of overhang - the extra wood on the plates that makes the edges. The regularity of the overhang is purely esthetic, but that is so important.

The neck is now ready to be shaped using rough rasps, files, knifes and going down to the finest grit of sand paper. The neck is polished with micromesh and the grain is raised several times with water in between the sanding.

 We do have measurements for the neck thickness, but what our hands tell us holding the neck is a better guide and the shadows that are created by our bench lamp on the neck will tell us about bumps and irregularities...