Scroll Carving - First turn.

Scroll Carving

Even long before thinking I would become a violin maker, I was carving wood.
Giving a shape to a block of material or carving right into it fascinates me. So when we come to heads, I feel in my element (I don't say that I don't pressurize myself to the highest beauty!)
I like carving scrolls commonly found on instruments of the quartet, I like too the more challenging head carving found more often on viols. I like both equally. I wish I would be asked more often to carve heads rather than scrolls. One day maybe...

Carving a scroll is much faster than carving a head, but in many ways, it can go wrong easier : there is much more roughing out and a much more extended use of the saw. One has to be extremely careful in making sure to cut right and rough out delicately. Also, it is more likely to be on scrolls that asymmetry and irregularities look like mistakes ! So I cannot rush on this one !!

Fun starts on the head

This time I decided that I was going to carve out the inside of the pegbox (that is the mortice were we can access to the pegs when we want to put strings on or change them) before bringing the walls of the pegbox to their definite shape.
So far, I was taught and accepted that we carve the outside of the pegbox and from that form, we draw and carve the inside. But I actually don't think it is a rule.
And in fact, in everything, conceiving a piece from its center line is a better guarantee for symmetry
Besides, carving the inside of the pegbox is a rough job where very sharp chisels are just not enough for me. So I go back to woodcarving core techniques and use a small hammer to tap on my chisel. One who uses these techniques, though has to remember that wood is made of fibers and these could break or tear under shock. So the hammering stays very mild and the chisels should be razor sharp. Having the walls of the pegbox at the original thickness helped to support the wood where I was working on it.
I spent a whole half a day alone just sharpening three of my chisels and carving out the pegbox took me a couple of days.

For the pegbox itself, I am (loosely) copying the measurements of one of Stradivari's heads - So I can't really go wrong !

Work on the head

I am lucky enough that my husband Douglas Macarthur is one of the best violin makers of the area. Since we like working together, we decided to make Victoria's cello together as we have done, very successfully, before.
The head and neck parts of the instrument are not really the bits most makers start the building with, but there is no rule. In our case, I'm waiting for Douglas to have finished his latest violin so that he can help with the very physical work of starting the body parts of the cello.
The nice bit is that the "wait" means working on the head... one of the bits I prefer working on. Of course it does include some physical roughing out... I don't think any part of a cello doesn't start with physical work...

Once the neck block was squared up, I did saw around the head and neck and that was me back at squaring. This means that all around the cut has to be square with the sides (again to make sure the scroll / head is straight and ultimately the pegs don't look like they point in every direction).