I have a viola started with a back out of a nice slab of curly cherry. Cherry isn't exactly violin wood, I've heard of cellos made out of it, but violas come in different sizes and shapes so maybe I can get away with it. I tried bending some violin bellies after buying a sitka spruce board that has killer bearclaw. The problem is run-out. Run-out? What's that? When a board is perfectly quartersawn the grain goes perfectly perpendicular to the faces. This board is out about 10 degrees. But since the thickness is 12mm I can plane both sides at an angle to get it down to 5mm thickness and then bend them. The other 2 I tried I didn't have a good steamer to steam them in. I've been looking at garage sales for some kind of pan about 18" x 6" x 5" or so deep, that has a top. No luck so far.
Anyway I started planing one of these half's the other day and noticed that the tap tone, which started out about the same as the thick one dropped in pitch. That was to be expected. But what surprised me was that the pitch rose even higher than the thick one when I planed the other side at an angle. Now it is about7mm thick (still needs more planing) and is more than a 5th higher in pitch than the thick one, and rings clear at that, where the other one sounds stifled. It seems that quartered wood is better all around. The photo (I shot more, they were all bad) doesn't show the bearclaw as much as it is. Now I need to find a steamer.
No comments:
Post a Comment