The violin

The woods generally used in violin making are:

- spruce for the belly, the bass bar, and the sound post;

- maple for the back, the ribs, the neck and the bridge;

- ebony for the fingerboard, the pegbox, the nut and the saddle;

- rosewood for the pegs and the button.

Linings, blocks and corners can be made out of pine, willow, poplar or any other light wood. The trees are carefully selected before being chopped down, and the violin maker, or the expert woodcutter, can determine their sound qualities by tapping the trunk with a hatchet. By following established precise criteria, he can determine whether a pine tree, for instance, is apt to produce a high-resonance wood. There are several parameters that determine such quality with respect to the geographic location of the tree (slope, wind, altitude, climate, soil).

Once the tree has been cut down (usually in the month of January), it is stored for many years (10 to 20!) in a dry, ventilated place protected from the change of seasons. Old wood is incontestably the best. Wood that has been stored for too long, however, is no better than very young wood...

Next