Shaping the Neck

First off, my apologies to anyone actually following the blog. It's been over a week since I've updated it, due in part to illness.
Now that the neck is on the instrument, I'll be shaping it so that it's comfortable to hold. I start with the button. I'll draw an arc around the edge of the button with a 21mm diameter. This will be the final shape at the bottom of the neck heel.

I cut away the overhanging excess, then scoop in the button and neck heel from the sides, beginning the shape of the heel and simultaneously blending it into the button so that no ledge between the two is visible.

Next, I come in from behind and shape the side-profile of the neck. I want to work in the scoops at the heel and the pegbox with a pattern-maker's rasp or a sharp knife. Once again, I'm trying to match the curve to a specific template. If you don't have your own, a quarter will do nicely. The rest of the neck profile will be perfectly straight (it's not to that point yet in the photo. Notice the bulge toward the heel end), and will taper in thickness by about 1.5mm.

Once the profile has been established, I'll use a knife to create a nice even chamfer about two thirds of the width from the outside edge to the centerline, and two-thirds of the thickness from the back of the neck profile to the bottom of the fingerboard. Then I'll smooth over the edges of the chamfer, creating a smooth, comfortable arc.

The inside of the neck heel is determined by a very specific distance, 26mm, from the outside edges of the top. I set my divider to that distance, and I start at one edge, placing the other end at the center of the neck heel.

From there, I should be able to rotate on that point at the back of the neck heel and meet the other edge perfectly. I adjust the thickness of the heel until I can do this, taking care not to go too far. Then I reshape the neck to where I need it.

And there it is. Now I turn the edges of the corners of the plates, since they've gone this far without getting damaged, and I can begin the finishing process.

Setting the Neck (Creating the Neck Mortise)

A violin-style neck dovetail is all surface area. The entire surface of the neck heel that I shaped in the previous blog will be glued to the exposed surfaces of the neck mortise, which I'm just about to create. I start by cutting out the area of the top that is to be removed. By removing it first, I can keep from splitting it here during the rest of the process. First I mark it out, 7mm in from the edge, and straight across. I keep the width here a solid millimeter slimmer on either side, to give me plenty of leeway, should it become necessary. Now I score a line with my knife across the inside edge of the mortise. I repeat this until it becomes deeper, and cut all the way through the top on the outer edges.
Then I can come in with my chisel and cut away the spruce and purfling leading up to that line. I don't try to remove it all at once but instead I work in cycles, scoring the inside edge of the mortise deeper into the top, then chiseling away the wood, then repeating. Eventually, I'll have cut my way all the way down to the rib structure, exposing it and part of the block. The ribs themselves must be cut away in a very similar fashion to the top.
I come through with a fine pencil and mark my desired width at the top, then at the bottom. I draw straight lines connecting my marks, then score into the lines with my knife. I continue to score until I've gotten as deep as is comfortable into the thickness of the ribs. I still have to cut this material away, though, and I don't have the same sort of access to it that I had on the top.
So what I do is come in across the grain with my chisel, holding the chisel at an outward slant so that I create a slight bevel leading up and away from the wall created by my scored lines. Also notice that the lines I scored are once again inside of the pencil lines that mark my final desired width. Once I've removed the rib material from both sides of the dovetail by alternately scoring and chiseling, I can cut the middle away. Then I cut straight down from the inside edge of the mortise to remove the block wood. I don't want to put any angle on my cut yet because if I was to angle it too much, I'd have to sacrifice neck length in order to get the correct extension height. Once the block wood is cut away, and the sides and back of the mortise are smooth and flat (thanks again to my chisel), I can actually place the neck heel into the mortise slightly.
Now I have plenty of clearance in all directions. The neck angle is still pitched forward too much, and the neck itself is still far too high. This would be a good time to discuss exactly what I'm trying to achieve when setting the neck. The first thing I should achieve is the centerline. The concept here is that the centerline of the neck should meet with the centerline of the body and they should form one straight line through the instrument. Alternatively, the centerline of the neck should converge with the centerline of the body, precisely at the bridge location (195mm from the top edge). It is easiest to find by eye, either by holding the violin a good distance away and looking at where the neck lines up, or by centering a violin bridge in its proper position on the top, then sighting down both edges of the fingerboard to make sure I have the same amount on both sides. The problem when the centerline is off can be hard to pin down if the mortise isn't completely flat, so that's the first thing you should check. If it is, just remove more material from the side of the mortise that the fingerboard is pointing towards (and the scroll away from).
Now, I'm not ready to attempt a particular overstand just yet, but I need to measure to see exactly how close I am. Remember the overstand is the height of the bottom of the fingerboard from edge of the top. Here I am measuring it on the right. My final desired overstand is 5.5 millimeters and right now I'm at about twenty. I measure on both sides to make sure there's no twist in the neck joint. That is to say, the overstand should be the same on both the treble and bass sides of the neck. If not, I need to remove material from the sides of the mortise, more from the top of the high side and, if necessary, more from the bottom of the low side. A perfect, even joint must always be maintained between the sides of the mortise and the heel of the neck.
Going back to the neck overstand, remember that I have about fourteen and a half millimeters excess neck height to get to my final desired overstand (twenty minus five and a half). I'll need that information to determine my neck extension height, which is derived on a finished instrument by laying a straight-edge on the fingerboard and measuring up from the center of the bridge position to determine the height above the top of the extension from the neck. Thus the name. For this instrument, I'm aiming for 27.5mm. Notice I'm at about thirty-two right now. But remember that I have to lower the neck by fourteen millimeters in the process. So I add that to 27.5 and get 41.5mm. Which means my neck extension height is almost a full centimeter lower than I want it to be right now. This is a good thing. If I was too high, I'd have to adjust the mortise to pitch the neck forward, which would require shortening the final lenth of my neck, which I already established at 13cm from the edge of the top to the nut/fingerboard joint on the neck. But to pitch the neck backwards, all I have to do is remove material from the bottom of the inside of the mortise, and keep it flat at the same time.
Once the neck extension height is at its proper place, I just need to lower the neck down to my desired overstand. This I do by removing straight, even cuts from the sides of the mortise. Eventually, I'm required to plane the excess wood from the bottom of the neck heel. It's important to create a flat surface that will join perfectly with the button when I glue the neck into place. By now the neck is good and tight in the mortise whenever I check it and once I get the overstand down to six millimeters, and have a consistent 1/2 millimeter gap between the button and the bottom of the neck heel, I slather the neck heel and the mortise with glue, then clamp the neck into place, driving it down that final half millimeter with the clamp so that I'll have a nice, snug fit.
So to recap, the four main things I have to keep in mind when setting the neck are the neck centerline, twist, neck extension height, and overstand. They all have to be at my desired specs at once, but if you take them one at a time and make your cuts carefully, it's not at all as difficult as it could be.

So next time I update my blog, I'll be shaping the neck.

Setting the Neck (Shaping the Heel)

Before I can set the neck into the body, I need to prepare the heel for the dovetail joint. A violin-style neck joint differs from a guitar or mandolin dovetail because on a violin, the heel itself is the dovetail for the joint. This will become a little more apparent as the process progresses. First, I plane the heel to its desired angle (about 87 degrees from the fingerboard surface). Then I rescribe my centerline, and work with that to lay out the important dimensions here. The first of these is the width of the fingerboard at the end of the heel. I measure half that width and mark a line on either side of the centerline. Then I measure down 5.5 millimeters, which is my desired overstand. The overstand is the height of the fingerboard surface of the neck over the edge of the top. I mark that, then measure down my rib height (29 mm in this case), then I measure down the thickness of the button, which should be anywhere from four to five millimeters. I mark the desired width of the button (21mm) from this line and connect the lines to get my final (desired) heel cross-section.
And now for a brief interlude from our fingerboard. But boy, is that thing chunky! A violinist would have a hard time playing on a fingerboard the way it's sold. That's because what the suppliers sell are actually fingerboard blanks. Some players like their fingerboards shaped a little differently, depending on taste or possibly the peculiarities of the instrument, so suppliers can't offer a one-size-fits-all model.
This means I have work to do. No worries, though. The pre-shaping done to the wood simplifies the task quite a bit. And if you're wondering whether it's worth springing for the higher grade of ebony, I had to work through a tiny knot in my last fingerboard that implied it is. Now, I take this blank and plane the sides so that the width at the nut end is 24mm, the width at the other end is 42mm, and the edge of the fingerboard is not a straight line, but a smooth arc, dipping down a full millimeter at its deepest point. The cross-section of the fingerboard is rigorously achieved by holding a radiused template to the surface and checking for gaps.
The surface of the fingerboard is not straight along its length either, but dips in half a millimeter at the E string, and a full millimeter at the G string, again with a smooth (if subtle) arc along its length. Then I smooth and polish the ebony so it looks really pretty. Sometimes if I'm in the mood I'll rub a little lemon oil into my fingerboards. This makes them look nice for a while, but doesn't really appear to have a lasting effect. Can you see the difference in the two pictures? Probably not, but you'd definitely feel the difference on a fiddle!
So the next thing I do is spot-glue the fingerboard onto the neck. This will be important while I set the neck because I can use it as a reference for the centerline as well to determine the all-important neck angle. This just takes about three dabs of hide glue and and hour or so. Because I won't be stressing the joint, and because the joint is not meant to be permanent, I feel no qualms about working with the neck after so short an amount of time.
What I want to do with it now is shape the heel. These surfaces are going to have to be perfectly flat, and quite precise. But there's no reason not to go ahead and hog away some of the excess wood with my incannel gouge. This leaves some rough marks, so I don't want to go too close to my lines, but I like to get it pretty close anyways, because I'll save a lot of time doing things this way. I also like to flush up the neck to the edge of the fingerboard, as long as I've got my gouge out.
Of course, after the gouging comes the planing, and here's where I really need to be conscious of the heel's dimensions. It's very important when planing these dimensions that the centerline remains accurate. If you wind up with a 21 millimeter wide buttton, and your heel is perfectly flat and trued to the fingerboard, but you have 11mm on one side of the centerline, and the other 10mm on the other side, it's best to do some extra planing and go with a 20 millimeter wide button. Some might disagree, but I like to err on the side of saving work.
Notice when the heel's done that it tapers in width from the front to the back, but also from the top to the bottom. This is the same as the traditional dovetail shape you'd find on a guitar or mandolin, though quite a bit more solid. You'll also notice that the bottom of the heel still has plenty of excess wood (i.e. the thickness of the button, and then some). I leave this on so that I'll have room to adjust the angle and height of the bottom as I bring the neck to its final overstand and neck angle while setting it. But I've gone on for long enough, so that's a story for another blog...

Carving the volute

The back of the pegbox and scroll still looks rather plain, so I'll be sprucing it up a bit in this blog.
The first step is to get out my trusty compass once again. I use it to trace a line 1mm from the inside of the edge. This is my "do not cross" line, since I'll be chamferring that edge later in the process.
Next I come in with a medium-sized gouge and scoop out a trough following that line, and another following the centerline that I scribed earlier in the building process.
It's important while doing this to pay careful attention to the direction of the grain runout. If I don't, the grain will split and tear out on me. That would be a difficult mistake to hide at this point. So I come in towards the scroll at the heel end, away from the scroll at the midsection, and at the trough in between them, I scoop sideways, either towards or away from the centerline.
I'll continue a similar pattern all the way around to the throat of the scroll, leaving two troughs and a ridge between them. Then I get to come in with the same gouge, cutting roughly in the same directions, and remove that ridge from the center.
It looks good from a distance now, but it still requires a bit of polish. So I come in with a small scraper, shaped just for this task, and clean the bottoms of the troughs, creating a nice smooth curve along their cross-section, and sharp, crisp lines, straight along my centerline and edge lines.
Here's my scraper and me. Now I've got a good-looking scroll, lacking only the chamfers. So with a 6mm violin knife, I create an even chamfer, about a millimeter wide, along the entire edge of the scroll.Here's another large picture, because it can be difficult to see otherwise. But that's it! A quick blog for a time-consuming process. Next blog I'll showcase setting the neck on the instrument. Then just a few final touches before we get to finish it!

Hollowing the Peg Box

Before I hollow out the peg box, I must first lay out the area to be hollowed. I begin with my compass, set to 4 millimeters wide. I draw a line with it following the outside edge of the peg box. This will be the thickness of the top of the peg box wall. Next, I reset the compass to six millimeters and draw a pair of lines, again following the outside edge of the peg box. This will be the thickness of the peg box walls along the bottom. The walls get thicker as you go deeper into the peg box for added strength.

Now I'll begin hollowing. This is the same handy jig I used to find the depths of my rough graduations. Now I'm using it to keep me from drilling to deeply into the peg box. With this step, unlike graduating the plates, I'm actually trying to remove wood, rather than merely marking particular depths. Consequently, I will be using the largest drill bit that will fit in the peg box without breaking the inside set of lines (representing the bottom of the peg box walls).

Notice I've drawn the profile of the peg box on the side of the scroll. This assists me in finding my final thicknesses, and in pointing the drill bit in the right direction so that I keep an even line onto the nut shelf. The bottom of the peg box is to be five millimeters thick. The real fear here is removing too much, which will weaken the peg box and perhaps lead to cracks later on. If I don't remove enough material at first, I can always get at it later. It is important to take a lot of material out, though, because the players will need plenty of room for the pegs. The instrument shouldn't be difficult to string up.

So here's the peg box after I've drilled my holes. A lot of material has been removed, but of course, not nearly enough. Now I'll take the neck back inside to my workbench and get at it with my chisels.

I'll use them first to remove the wood from in between the holes. Then I can come in and clean up the sides, going no farther than the inside lines. So at this point, I should have a consistent 6mm wall all the way along the edge of the peg box.

During this process, I'm also using my chisels to clean the bottom of the peg box, and establish its final thickness at the same time. I'll also come in at the ends, where the mortise is still rounded, and sharpen the corners.

But my walls are still too thick. Now that I've gotten the hard work out of the way, I just come in from the top and create a smooth, straight plane from my 4mm walls down to the already-established bottom of the mortise.

It doesn't look to bad when it's all done. But there's still work to be done on the neck before I can set it. I'll carve the volute along the outside of the scroll in my next blog.

Carving the Scroll

Carving the scroll can be a bit daunting at first, but it's really one of the more enjoyable (if somewhat time-consuming) parts of the building process for me.
I use the pin pricks I made earlier as a reference (you can play dot-to-dot with them to get the spiral if you really want to), and the penciled lines around the outside of the scroll keep me from sawing too deep. So first I saw down from the top, then I come in from the side to remove the first big chunk of wood.

It's really pretty straight-forward. The trick is not to go too deep with either of the cuts. It's also important to be aware of the angle of the cut. For the first cut, I angle outward away from the center a bit. That keeps me from immediately undercutting the tower of the scroll, creating an unsightly "flowerpot" effect. The next cut should be angled a little bit upward so that the edge of the scroll isn't scooped in. It should also follow the angle of the pencil line to minimize wood removal later on.
Here's what the cut looks like when it's been finished. But I don't like to start carving yet.

I'll go around the edge of the scroll, doing pretty much the same thing, though my cuts get smaller and smaller because there's less wood to be removed. Then I can come down from the top with a variety of differently-sized gouges and round off those corners. The goal is to turn the octagon into a circle.

Once that has been accomplished, I come in from the sides with the same set of gouges and scoop in towards the tower of the scroll. Throughout, I am attempting to create a smooth, clean-looking surface that will be attractive on the final instrument. I'll come in with scrapers later to clean up some of the mess. I actually have two that I shaped just for that purpose.

The trouble here is that I can really only go so far with the gouges before I need to revert to the saw. I take off more wood around the tower, then I'll come in with the gouges and repeat the process, using smaller and smaller gouges as I near the center. At the beginning of the process, I was using a 25mm wide gouge. By the time I get to the button in the center, I'm using a 5mm gouge. My entire set of gouges has a number five sweep.
Here's what the scroll looks like after I've gouged the whole thing out.
Here's what it looks like after I've come in and cleaned it up with scrapers.

After that process was completed, I get to do the other side. While it's merely a repetition of the last bit, the second side can be somewhat more difficult. This is because so much care must be taken to make it perfectly symmetrical to the first side, something that I don't feel I've managed to accomplish yet, to my satisfaction.Next I'll start hollowing the pegbox. This is an exciting time.

Prepping the Neck

Before I can get to the fun stuff like carving the scroll, there is some basic work that needs to be done on the neck stock. First and foremost, it isn't even squared up yet. So I take my little block plane and fix that problem right away. Notice what a big chunk of wood this is. I'll be getting both necks out of this one piece.


So once the wood is completely square, I can take it to the bandsaw and cut out some blanks for the two necks. I just generally cut them, not even trying to achieve a particular shape, but really just separating them from one another.



You may notice that one of these neck blanks is significantly longer than the other. That one would be for the cigar box fiddle. The cigar box is about ten inches long, whereas the length of a violin body is typically fourteen. In order to keep the bridge in the acoustical center of the box, and to keep the scale length the same as an average fiddle so that it's comfortable to most violin players, I elongate the neck.


The next step is to lay out the profile of the neck. Once again, I have an aluminum template that functions pretty well for that. I set it in place and trace around it, then use a square to carry lines over the flattened "fingerboard surface." I use these lines to align the template on the other side of the neck blank. My template has holes in it at the scroll area that I use as a guide to make marks with pushpins. These marks are a guide for the actual carving of the scroll.


I cut out around the pegbox area and most of the neck with a bandsaw, but I leave plenty of wood at the heel area for stability. Then I use my marking gauge to scribe a centerline down the entire neck blank, scroll, pegbox, and all.
Using my scribed centerline and the two lines (the nut shelf and the end of the neck blank) I marked earlier when transferring the template, I can lay out the top of my neck.


Next, I cut the excess from the sides (I keep these, though, so that I can shim the neck square to a work surface later). I leave extra wood at the end of the headstock, of course. That's where my scroll belongs. But that's a story my next blog...