This site has something for you if you are either making a violin or you want to improve a low cost violin or viola.

By tuning the top & back plates you can get a good instrument that responds well to the bow and that can sound like a £1500 instrument.

You will need about £500 ($1000) of tools if you buy the real things, but much can be achieved with very much less .......

Computer and microphone, with free recording and FFT software such as “Audacity”, available off the web. Have a look here to see what the options are and how to do it.

A thicknessing gauge that can reach inside the back when it has the sides or bouts on. This is perhaps the tool, along with the small thumb planes that I use most. It cost about £65 ($130) on eBay, new.

There are various plans for making your own from wood etc, but I found that I just couldn’t get the accuracy with a homemade (wooden) version to reach into the back when it has bouts on. Here’s one guys idea ..... and another using part of a motorcycle and a dial gauge .....    But if you only do thicknessing on new plates then simple home - made gauges using levers can work well.

A good craftsman’s knife, and sharpening stone.

A good set of chisels, and/or gauges flat and curved.

Rasps.

A kitchen balance or scales, with better than 1 gram accuracy.

Shown here with a jap saw.

Thumb planes: they give you blisters after a few hours, but it’s an occupational hazard.  I have only 2 at the moment: one flat bottomed, and one with a convex base for thinning the insides of the plates.  It has a 10 mm blade.

A small plane with about 1 1/4” cut: to tidy up the top of the bouts and blocks.

Glue-pot for animal glue: I use a baby-bottle warmer from a junk or a charity shop, set at 55 - 68 deg C, a mid range setting. I calibrated this one. The pearl animal glue + water goes into the small pot - the kind used in hotels for marmalade or jam. When not in use I keep the mini-glue pot in the top of the fridge to stop mould growing in or on the glue. Do not use it on toast, it tastes disgusting.

A ‘Dremel’ type hand-held router. This is a “Power Craft” Combitool sold by Aldi in the UK for less than £20 ($40), with a useful flexible drive shaft. 10k to 35k rpm, but only 160 Watts.

I use this, or its bigger brother to grind down the over-thick bouts (sides) of factory fiddles using a cylindrical sanding head shown.

I will also use this for routing for the purfling soon with an adapter to keep the distance from the edge and the depth constant , and cutting to a depth of ~1.5 - 2 mm.

A Drill press.  A basic model can be bought new for about £50 ($100), and is indispensable, it may be worth paying more - some very useful hints here at Pete Shugg’s Power Tool page about drill-presses. He loves the the Safe-T-Planer cutter too: see later.

Mowry Strings uses the Safe-T-Planer cutter (about $50) in such a drill press to carve the external contour profiles of mandolin backs, which are like violin fronts or backs. He calls it a ‘topographic step method’. This is an alternative to using hand gouges for carving. I’ve not tried it yet. The Planer head is apparently also useful for thinning the raw bouts to 1 to 1.2 mm.

A small Bandsaw.  I just got a 12” (used) Clarke CBS-12WB 3-wheel bandsaw for Christmas. It cost about £60 ($120) off eBay. It dates from about 1993, hardly used. This is the older single-speed version with a 6 mm blade, and here is a copy of the handbook / Owner’s Manual for it here as I can’t find it anywhere else on the web. There is a later variable speed version, still available from Machine Mart. Aldi (UK) sometimes have a 2-wheel bandsaw in the shop for £50 ($100), or a drill press for the same price!

Scrapers, curved

A pencil gauge: Derek Roberts is shown using one here.

Here’s an experimental pencil gauge I made last year. It’s invaluable for visualising the arching of the front and back plates by using ‘contours’: like a map of the countryside with its hills and valleys. It is used when the back surface of the belly of back plate is still flat: i.e. before gouging out the inside of a plate.

The pencil clamped in the top bar marks the top of plate while the top of a bolt beneath keeps it fixed distance from flat side of the plate.

I used an M6 bolt which locates into an M6 nut, which in turn is glued into the bottom bar. A wing nut locks the bolt into position.

A second M6 bolt (with its wing-nut to lock it) allow the gauge to be opened out and then closed up again keeping its calibration when the violin plate is held down on a ‘carving board’ above the workbench. A piece of plastic acts as a ‘hinge’.

Use M6 nuts and bolts for all such projects. They have a pitch of 1.0 mm: one turn of the bolt or nut moves exactly 1.0 mm, so adjustments of say 1/2 mm are one half turn - easy!

The gauge works ok but you can see I used the wrong wood: the cheap softwood of the vertical split straight away!  Use hardwood or better, metal, say steel or ali’.

Clamps (a full set) to hold the front on while it the glue sets, and various sizes of G-clamps too. I made 2 C-shaped clamps shown here to reduce the number of spool clamps needed and make the operation of clamping quicker: it needs to be quick so the glue doesn’t gel while the top or back is glued on.

A knife to remove the front. I use a old table knife that I’ve ground down and shortened on a bench grinder. It needs to be quite thin, with edges not too sharp: I’ve cut myself quite badly with this knife a couple of times as a front or fingerboard can suddenly give way and the knife goes out of control. So take great care - always cut away from you left hand. Here are some web pages on opening the violin or viola front (belly) with such a knife - they can be found here and here.

A good metal ruler.

Touch-up varnish and good brushes.

A flat file, sandpaper, and fine emery cloth.

A soundpost setting tool.