Pochette - first steps
I beget dream of been interested in the concept of travel fiddles - they enjoy a rite dating back at least to the eighteenth century when 'dancing professional' or 'appurtenances' violins were popular. They were designed to entrust itinerant dancing teachers to travel to the client's home and be compact tolerably closely to up in a pocket. Some were concealed in walking sticks, others were wholly decent instruments with satisfactorily tone to notify a drawing chamber, but not enough to disturb the neighbours.
only of the best examples is Neil Gow's gadget fashionable contained in Scotland's in Glasgow. Copies of these are being made by in the USA.
I photographed a twosome of such instruments in the Victoria and Albert museum in London last year, and have often felt that most copies are really too small to make a thoughtful peaceful - the Rickert Neil Gow copy is an exception to this decide.
The pochette pictured further is one I photographed in the
When looking at making one myself, I cerebration that it should be at least as wide as the lucky business or 'waist' of a stable violin - about 4 inches or 100mm to organize a conservative sound-table compass. I like the around-shouldered rectangle form so I have begun the first stages of construction with this in mind.
I began by cutting some melamine MDF (medium density fibreboard) to the at long last of a normal violin, and 100mm wide (4 inches). This is to be the loam all which the appliance would be assembled - a unwritten violin making technique.
I then planed some pine down to just down 2mm thickness for the ribs. This was done by sardonic two thin slices and then attaching them to a larger board with double-sided tape recording and using the jointer to diminish them to the correct thickness.
I also slight some blocks (they are yet to be fully shaped) which will provide support the neck and button at each extermination of the fiddle. Again this is a traditional artistry. The neck and fingerboard were supplied by my local luthier who had an irrepairable violin.
And that is the contrive I'm at stylish. Not bad an evenings' work! The real challenge wishes be harsh the maple treacherously and belly from a log I've had sitting around since the Canberra Bushfires five years ago - the tree was in our yard and was dangerously burnt, and some segments of the bole remain in my garage.
Next weekend I'll adulterate a brace of slabs and begin the real talkative process of shaping them into arched plates for the fiddle.
Cheers
Jerry
