New-ish work

Hi friends--time for an update.  Much has happened in the shop since last I wrote--new lutes flew out the door to their new homes, a lute mold got made, and two more lutes are now well under way.  I have much to tell you about, and a long weekend in which to get started, so here goes.

First, two new 6 course lutes were finished in March.  One is a 9 rib model, for John Jamison, in Washington state; the other is an 11 rib model for Michael Stover, in Washington, D.C.  Both are versions of an early-to-mid 16th century lute, suitable for playing anything from early Italian repertoire (Dalza, Francesco, Capirola) to the music of Dowland--in other words, practically the whole of the 16th century.

 A few shots of the 9 rib...

The back is made of some highly figured  birdseye maple.

A detail shot of the treble bridge point (the bridge is of plum.)

And a couple of shots showing the neck and peg box.  The pegs are plum, the neck and fingerboard are pear wood, and the darker fingerboard edging is snakewood.

The rose is taken from a late-15th century painting by Giovanni Bellini.  Ray Nurse drew the pattern (Thanks again, Ray.)

And now some shots of the 11 rib:

The back is of curly maple.

The rose is a design after Gerle.

The lutes look very much alike, but there are some subtle differences. The 11 rib's body is a little shallower,  in response to the client's wish for a quick, bright-sounding lute with good projection (though I should also say that the 9 rib has excellent projection, a crisp attack and nice full tone).  The positions of the rose and bridge are a little lower on the 11 rib's belly too--a couple of design tweaks which, along with some slight modifications of the internal barring scheme, were also aimed at creating the sound that we were looking for.

Both of these lutes have a fingerboard that extends onto the soundboard, a feature that's often seen in paintings from the early 16th century and before.  There is a small controversy about whether what we see in those old paintings is actually the fingerboard, or simply some dark varnish or paint extending down from the fingerboard to protect the upper part of the soundboard.  A bit of an esoteric subject, perhaps, but hey, I'm a lute maker--I eat esoteric for breakfast.

(For those interested, the English lute maker David Van Edwards discusses the issue fully here.)

During the planning stage for his lute, Michael Stover sent me a photograph that he had taken on a trip to Italy some years before.  This photograph, of an early-16th century fresco in the Duomo in Urbino, shows a lute with what looks like a Gerle-type rose, and almost certainly a fingerboard that extends into the upper area of the soundboard.  It's a great looking design overall.  I've used it for both of these new lutes, and will use it as the basis for the design of my 6 course lutes from now on.

Photo: Michael Stover

Schelle/Widhalm

Today, as promised, a brief description of making the Widhalm 'swan-neck' extension--the elegant, elongated double pegbox on the 13 course lute that I completed earlier in the summer.

But why a Widhalm extension? you ask.  Who is this Widhalm you keep talking about, Travis?

Well, the full name is Martin Leopold Widhalm, Leopold to his friends, and he was a lute and violin maker in Germany in the middle 1700s.  Originally from Vienna, he came to Nuremberg to work in the shop of the master luthier Sebastian Schelle shortly after Schelle's death, in 1744.  At this time the workshop was being run by Schelle's eldest daughter Barbara.  Apparently sparks flew (a dangerous thing when there's sawdust around!), because she and Leopold were married within the year.  They worked together to the end of their lives--Leopold died in 1776, Barbara in 1781--making lutes and violins of the highest quality, and they raised three sons who carried on the family trade.

I mention this not just because it's an interesting and happy story of true love in the lute shop (though I am all in favour of that)--it also shows a direct connection between the model of lute I've made and the model of pegbox extension I want to use with it.  Whenever I consider the design of an instrument, I try to make sure that my choices are historically informed--that there's some sort of evidence, whether pictorial, or documentary, or physical (a surviving instrument) that supports what I'm doing.  I'm not dogmatic about such things, but I do want to guard against creating any glaring historical anachronisms.  In the case of the Widhalm extension, it's a good historical fit, but it's also a really good model.  If it's executed well, it looks great, and most importantly, it works.

Anyway, on to the process.  And to give credit where credit is due: the method I've used here was shown to me by my mentor, master lute maker Grant Tomlinson.  One cannot go far astray with such a generous teacher to show the way!

Begin with an appropriately sized chunk of beautiful, creamy English Sycamore, and two patterns, showing the plan and side views of the extension.  Draw the patterns on the planed surfaces of the blank, and proceed to the bandsaw--

I've cut from the side first, but as you'll notice, I haven't cut the waste pieces away completely--I've left little 'bridges' of material at strategic places so that the entire blank remains intact for the time being.  This is so I can now lay down the blank flat on its back, and cut out the plan-view shape.

And this is what it looks like after cutting the plan view.  I can now take the piece to the workbench and cut away the waste pieces with a hand saw.

And here's what I'm left with: the basic shape that I can now refine with rasps, files, and scrapers.

No sooner said than done!  This sycamore is lovely stuff to work.

Next, I locate and drill all the peg holes in the pegbox extension.  There are 24 pegs, so 24 holes in each side of the pegbox...48 holes in all... and they'd better be in the right place!  Once I've engineered all that, I can use patterns to lay out the areas that I need to carve out.  I avail myself of the modern technology of the drill press and forstner bit to remove the bulk of the material, and then I'll finish off these cutaways with hand carving tools.

I need to fit a tall nut on the extension, so I carefully cut a slot and fit a tapered piece of hard maple.

Everything looks good so far--I'll start fitting the extension to the neck of the lute.

The main things to keep in mind while fitting this is that the extension needs to be aligned in two axes, up and down and side to side--but the joint itself needs to be perfectly fitted.

When I'm absolutely sure that everything is in proper alignment, I can set up my gluing rig, take a deep breath, and glue it in place.  As always, hide glue is the perfect adhesive for the job.

To give myself a little extra room for adjustment during the fitting-up process, I've left the root end of the extension a little over-size.  Once the extension's glued on, I can carve away this excess, and make a smooth transition between the neck and the extension.

When it's all in shape, I dye the extension black, using a dyestuff called logwood.  It comes in powder form, and it's taken from a South American tree.  It's a very reliable, colourfast dye, and it's been in use for a long time (I've read that the Puritans used it to dye their clothing black.)

You'll notice that I'm dyeing not only the Widhalm extension, but also the pegboxes and pegs of a couple of other lutes (the 8c and 11c that I built alongside this 13c).  Dyeing is a bit of a messy and involved process, and I try to arrange my work so I can do a number of different jobs all at the same time.

The colour of the dyed extension is a little cold at this point, and so far not a good match with the warmer tones of the ebony veneered neck.  The colour changes, though, as soon as I apply an oil finish to the extension.  The oil warms up the colour considerably, and now there's a nice match of colour and surface texture between the veneered neck and the extension.


Now we're ready to fit the pegs, fit the two bone nuts, and string up the finished instrument.

There we are!  Now all I've got to do is learn how to play the Baroque lute.  (So far, at least, I'm a Renaissance man only....)  If there are any Baroque players out there, maybe you could leave a comment telling me if I'm at least holding the lute properly!

And that's the end of the process.  What I've described here is by no means a blow-by-blow of the entire procedure of making and fitting this extension--I've just given some highlights.  The end product turned out really well, and I'm quite happy with the process and the result. 

Until we meet again....

Fresh-baked lutes! Get 'em while they're hot!

Hi everyone--hope you had a great summer.  Mine was fantastic--among many other adventures, the Lute Society of America Workshop was held in August at UBC, and I was the Lute Doctor.  I got to meet a lot of old friends and new friends, and got to meet a whole lot of lutes (and tie a whole lot of frets!)  I'll post a pic or two on an upcoming blog post--for now, I have some older business to tell you about.

Last I posted was in late June.  I was working on three lutes at the time,  an 11c lute, an 8c, and a 13c.  Well, the good news is that all three are finished, all three turned out fabulously well (if I may say so myself), and all three are with their new owners, in their new homes--Seattle, Washington; Homer, Alaska; and Sydney, Australia.  Here they are, the finished products:

The 11c Frei--

The 8c Tieffenbrucher--

And the 13c Schelle (with an extension after Leopold Widhalm)--

 Three new lutes; a good winter's work.  I'm on to new projects now, but for the moment I'd like to dwell on the 13c lute, specifically the pegbox extension.  It was the first time I'd made one of these beasts, and it was a big challenge, and a lot of fun.  I'll tell you about it in the next post--soon!

A long, long, long, long, long story short

Hello friends, and welcome back to the lute blog.  It has been a long time since I last posted, and for those of you who once hung on my every word, and have felt bereft, nay betrayed, since the last installment, my sincerest apologies.  All I can say in my defense is that work in the shop has taken precedence over writing about work in the shop.

I think I need to refocus my expectations a bit about what I can do with a blog.  Lute making's all about details (finely wrought, one hopes), but trying to cram all of that detail into a journal such as this is just foolish.  Not that I intend to do that--the subtitle says clearly this is an occasional  journal--but to me all of these details are equally fascinating and worthy of blogification.  But then the idea of sitting at the computer and rehashing the hours I've just put in at the workbench, fascinating though they may be, turns me off the idea altogether, and I just want to run out into the meadow and chase butterflies.  Then the shame spiral sets in, and the less I blog the less I feel worthy of blogging, and then nothing gets blogged at all.  Oh, Blog, it wasn't supposed to be this way!  Oh, Blog, why dost thou torment me so?

Ahem.  Excuse me.  Back to what I was saying, about lutes.

So last time we talked I was just about to glue in bellies into the three lutes.  (That was in April.  I've had two haircuts since then!)  The good news is, all went well, the bellies stuck, and life continued.  The gluing of the lute belly is always a bit of a wistful time, a time of hope and fond wish and sincere expectation; you've done your research and your best work and made your best choices, regarding thicknesses and barring patterns and suchlike; you may even have strung up a temporary string with the belly taped in place, just to hear what the top course might sound like--but even with all this preparation, you still don't really know how things will sound until the lute's done and strung and played.  Think of it as a time capsule, a box into which you place your most treasured possession, in the hope that sometime, somewhere down the line, someone will discover it and find it beautiful.

A lute belly glued in--

Soon becomes a lute (or three) with edge bindings, fingerboard points, and fingerboard.

Ah, how quickly they grow!

(from left: the 11c Warwick Frei, the 8c Tieffenbrucher, the 13c Schelle.)


At this point, the lutes are finished 'in the white', and are nearly ready to be varnished.  The fingerboards have been planed to the proper contour (so that the action will turn out just right), and the entire lute has been carefully brought to its final shape.

One of the last tasks at this stage is it burnish the back of the lute (the bowl).  This is done not with any kind of space-age abrasive, but with the dried stalks of a common plant called horsetail (it's also called shave grass).  It grows everywhere in marshy areas, so there's lots of it around Vancouver (there's some growing up against the cinderblock building across the alley from my workshop).  Here's a sample of some of the dried segments I used to burnish the back of the Schelle lute:

Here is a disembodied hand in action with the shave grass:

If you work patiently, shave grass will burnish the wood of the bowl to an almost gloss surface--a great foundation for your layers of varnish.

Luthiers of all kinds have been using this stuff to burnish instruments probably since musical instruments started being made.  It's funny how a small thing like this can, if you give it a moment's thought, connect you with a tradition that's about as old as humanity itself.

The lutes are now ready to be varnished.  Another major step's complete.  And while they're being varnished, I'm going to get to work on pegboxes and pegs.  This is a fun topic all on its own, and the subject of the next blog post....

But for now, I've got butterflies to chase!