Pocket fiddle top

[arbarnhart]

I made a pocket fiddle (below). It's a one piece carved mahogany body and neck and in the picture it has a redwood top with an induced arch. Then it got humid; then it got not so humid. You can probably guess what happened next. I have a nice supply of redwood toothpicks. So I am going to re-top it, but this time I think I will carve the top. The point of this thing is to be faux historical for a Ren faire minstrel who isn't too worried about period correctness (I also have a rebec in progress using period appropriate woods and design for someone who is worried about such). Anyway, the old top broke right at the sound post (yes, it had one). I am wondering if it really needs one. I am also looking for advice on how thin to carve. I hope for decent sound, but I don't want it coming back for a new top in 6 months; I would like it to be sturdy. It's going to live outdoors at festivals. It did seem to have decent volume before. I am no fiddler, but it scored pretty high on the CLI scale (that's "Cat Levitation Inches"). http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[Stephen Perry]

I'd use any quartered spruce, put a maple veneer patch at the soundpost location. Guessing, would put the top at 2.7 mm thick. If no post patch, go to 3.2 mm there. Looks fun.

[DougC]

Where did the crack occur? How wide is the fiddle at the bridge? What kind of strings are on it?

My wife has an historic reproduction. They are called a pouchet. That's French for pocket. I'll try to post a foto sometime.
DougC

[arbarnhart]

Where did the crack occur? How wide is the fiddle at the bridge? What kind of strings are on it?

My wife has an historic reproduction. They are called a pouchet. That's French for pocket. I'll try to post a foto sometime.
DougC
The crack was under the treble foot, right next to the soundpost. My suspiscion is that the induced arch was trying to flatten and cracked over the post. I have seen a few pictures of these. There were some really cool ones made as part of a cane.

It's a little under 4". I am following this plan (http://www.vintageprojects.com/woodshop/RebecFiddle.pdf) (and despite what it says, that is not a rebec) only I have 4 strings and I am trying to "beef it up" a bit for outdoor use. Plus I added the tied on tail piece to look more period authentic and my wood choice is different because I have quite a bit of mahogany stock in the right size and it is easier to carve than maple. I plan to do some decorative carving on the exterior.

The strings are a cheap set of standard steel.

[DougC]

Violins often have a 'sound post crack'. It keeps us fiddle repair guys in business.

I suspect, without seeing holding the instrument that the soundpost may have been really wedged in , that often causes a crack when the instrument goes thru a big change in humidity. Another cause is the dryness of the wood, or lack of dryness/ green wood to be exact.

After reading your pdf of Roy's Rebic the soundpost suggestion is the problem. The soundpost must be made of spruce or it will crack the top. Also it should fit precisely against the back as well as the top. If you squeeze the sides of the fiddle, the top should bend a little allowing a well fitted soundpost to fall down. No easy task to fit that thing.
No glue either.

In violins you look thru the end pin hole to see if the soundpost is straight up and down. Since I don't see a removable end pin in your photo, I think you might do well to thin out the bass bar, go with a thicker top and skip the soundpost. Real travel violins had no soundpost and they were roughly this size.
Hope this helps.

[arbarnhart]

Thanks. I wondered about the maple dowel it called for. It's like a blunt wooden nail. The plan actually shows it n the middle, but I put it under the treble foot and I used the method shown of making a small hole on the bottom to stand it in. But I did not put the bass bar over it which is another bizarre little thing in the plan. It also says don't use quarter sawn for the top, don't use gut strings (if it really were a rebec, gut would be appropriate), dye parts with ink and finish it with floor sealer. Very strange. My confidence in everything that it says being a "best practice" is pretty low, but it is a usable plan for the type of instrument I wanted to build and the price was right for a cheap skate like me. The peg shaping jig recommoended is pretty good though.

I started a new top tonight. This slender size gave me a dirt cheap source for a nice piece of spruce. I resawed a 2x4 at an angle to get the diagonal piece, choosing the board and the corners to go between to orient the grain as QS. I think I will go a little thicker and put a weaker spruce post in.

[DougC]

Bizzare is right. I was being polite. But I think you will really have some fun with this thing.

The soundpost should be about 3-4mm diameter. Kind of thin looking. And it goes under the treble foot of the bridge and the bass bar goes under the bass side.

Strings are a consideration. Thoes cheap strings put a lot of pressure on the bridge. I'd get some Helicore Light violin strings and a cheap fiberglass bow. Perhaps a kid sized 3/4 size bow for fun. You can get them pretty cheap at www.quinnviolins.com

[arbarnhart]

I tested the previous top with a fiberglass bow that came with some kids' fiddles my mom sent (no doubt to get even with me for things I pulled as a child) but I need a wooden one to go with it so it won't look out of place in a Ren faire setting. I may have to try their bow idea also. It's strange but looks period correct.

[arbarnhart]

A complication!

I hope one of you fiddle savvy guys are around...

When I said I was going to carve instead, I meant really carve, as in an arch top with a recurve. With the small width of this instrument, that means there are no flat spots or even nearly flat spots unless I force one or two. Is that what I should do? It seems like the sound post will just fall over if I don't make a flat spot for it. On the bass side, I either need to leave a flat spot for the bass bar or else I need to carve a curved bass bar to fit the top. I stopped carving with enough thickness left in those spots to be able to leave a flat spot. Carving a top this size is really enjoyable; I put my Kevlar carving glove on and hold the top in one hand and use my favorite palm gouge. I may have found my niche. If that's the case, I better learn to play these things...

[GD Armstrong]

On a fiddle the ends of the soundpost are angled to match the arching of back & top. The bass bar is fitted to the curve of the arching also. On some of the cheaper old fiddles the bass bar is carved directly out of the top wood but that is not reccomended.

I've made a couple of pochetts - they are fun little beasts if somewhat nasle sounding.

[arbarnhart]

I found a good picture of one with a bridge that will fit the top well:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/sunnybear1/Gbday03JinkDiddlechristmas058.jpg

No visible recurve there, but I think that is even skinnier than mine.

[DougC]

That is an excellet picture. Pretty accurate in terms of historic proportions. Thoes don't have a sound post. However since your little fiddle is 4" wide I'll have to do a little research about eliminating the soundpost.

Fitting a sound post is a nasty difficult task. You can cheat a little by having a flat spot on the back. The top should be the same thickness as the rest of the top and a flat spot there may not be a good idea. But since this is not a million dollar instrument you may try that.

As for the bass bar- again a nasty task. On violins, the bass bar humps up toward the top leaving a spring like effect, pushing the top back to level after the bridge pushes down on it. Fiddles with a carved bass bar often have a dip in the top at the bass bar area. Again I would not worry too much about it. There are some sources and fotos on the internet, I'll see if I can find them.

The bow should be a Baroque bow to be historically accurate. Shar Music has Baroque bows pretty cheap.

[arbarnhart]

That is an excellet picture. Pretty accurate in terms of historic proportions. Thoes don't have a sound post. However since your little fiddle is 4" wide I'll have to do a little research about eliminating the soundpost.

Fitting a sound post is a nasty difficult task. You can cheat a little by having a flat spot on the back. The top should be the same thickness as the rest of the top and a flat spot there may not be a good idea. But since this is not a million dollar instrument you may try that.

As for the bass bar- again a nasty task. On violins, the bass bar humps up toward the top leaving a spring like effect, pushing the top back to level after the bridge pushes down on it. Fiddles with a carved bass bar often have a dip in the top at the bass bar area. Again I would not worry too much about it. There are some sources and fotos on the internet, I'll see if I can find them.

The bow should be a Baroque bow to be historically accurate. Shar Music has Baroque bows pretty cheap.
How can you be sure? I haven't set my price yet. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

If you have a high speed connection, check out this page:
Paul Butler's Rebec page (http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/rebec.html)

I also have on of those in progress following his plans:

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e396/arbarnhart/AB%20Folk%20Instruments/fiddle_carve.jpg

That rock maple is a bear to carve compared to the mahogany!

Anyway, near the bottom of Paul's page is this photo:
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/frebec44.jpg

I am planning to make that style of bow for both the "real" rebec and this fiddle. As I mentioned earlier, this one is faux historical, so it wouldn't bother me so much to have a bow that doesn't exactly match but looks somewhat period appropriate. Ren fairs have a mix of people who are anal about period correctness at one extreme and others are wandering around in nylon robes playing Yamaha guitars at the other extreme. The rebec I am working on is for the first type and this one is for the performers more toward the other end.

I really appreciate all the help. A while back I communicated some with John Pringle (http://pringleviols.com/) and he invited me to come out to his shop (about a half hour away) some time and soak up some knowledge (I wish I could soak up his talent). I need to get out there one of these days...

[DougC]

That curved bow is appropriate for the rebec. The baroque bow is right for the pouchet. Also I learned that sound posts and bass bars were not invented in the rebec's time. I think a lot of people try to 'improve' the rebec by treating it like a violin.

My initial guess still holds. Make the back about twice as thick as the top and go with strings that put as much pressure on the bridge as old gut strings.

The rebec is not a mandolin but the engineering concepts apply to both. The best source for this kind of stuff is called "the Violin Explained:Components, Mechanism and Sound" by James Beament, Oxford University Press. Reprinted in 2007.

It is a paperback book and it's easy to read, not some stuffy tome. He also explains things in a direct and humorous way. It's quite refreshing. Beament would be happy here at mandolin cafe.

[arbarnhart]

I posted something to the music section on a Ren fair forum and got some feedback pretty quickly. The vast majority of modern minstrels are not hung up on authenticity (it is very expensive to be anal about period correctness in musical instruments; just take a look at John Pringle's price list) and this design would be well recieved, probably even moreso than a period correct rebec because "proper" rebecs really aren't very good fiddles. I really need to learn to play so I can gauge how I am doing.

[arbarnhart]

Kind of a running monologue here, but a bit of additional info...

For info on this stuff, books.google.com (http://books.google.com/) is your friend. If you go into advanced search, you can choose just things they have full content on and there are a number of out of print resources that they have scanned in. You can view them online or download PDF files. I was able to find one on violin history that has a few plates that are extremely close to what I am building and reading the text on how things evolved leaves very little doubt that such a thing existed. Also, it seems that there were many variations in woods used before Antonio came along and used maple and spruce and builders seeking to recreate his works toe the line on materials (much like Lloyd Loar, no?). I went a little further afield on source wood; I really did plan to carve those maple pegs into something reasonably decent, but while I was getting some bow hair at IV I noticed Ken had put rosewood pegs on sale for 50 cents each!