Tools – Martin Schleske – Meisteratelier für Geigenbau

Tools that have been with me for decades.

Each one has its own story.

Sound, hand, material, noise, resistance—these twelve tools encapsulate the everyday life of my workshop.

THE CURVING PLANE

Of all the violin-making tools, the crown plane is my favorite. If I were to add up all the time I’ve spent holding this brass plane (which is only 38 millimeters long) between my thumb and index finger, it would amount to several years by the end of my life. I know the curve of its sole better than anything I’ve ever touched. This familiarity is important, because only then does the tool become a natural extension of my own hand. I use the arching plane to bring out the violin’s tonal character, for it is with this tool that I shape the arch and finish the top and back plates. My middle finger rests on the back of the plane. With it, I can gently lift or press down on the back of the plane, depending on how much wood I want to remove. In this way, with every stroke of the plane, I determine the precision of the shavings’ thickness at the plane’s mouth.

I love the soft hissing sound when I follow the grain of the wood, and the characteristic roughness when I go against the grain. You can feel the vibrations of the plane and, for hours on end, listen to its sound in the silence of the workshop, for in it the resonances of the violin’s top and back reveal themselves. This is how the plane shapes the sound.

THE CARVER

Whenever possible, one should work with a chisel rather than with files. That’s how the work takes on its own distinctive character. The pieces aren’t simply filed into shape; instead, they take on a confident line. Especially with the f-holes, which give the violin its distinctive character, the personality of the craftsman’s hand should be recognizable.

I made my 18-millimeter woodcarving chisel—which I’ve been using for 40 years to cut all my outlines—myself when I was 18, during my apprenticeship. I set the multi-layered steel into a brass bed, which is encased in burl wood and a rosewood inlay, forming the handle shell. The reason for the unusual brass bed is its greater weight. It makes this carving tool—weighing just under 300 grams—a good five times as heavy as it would be with a standard wooden handle. Once the carving tool is set in motion by the flow of the hand, its substantial mass helps achieve clear and decisive lines. It moves with precision and effortlessly guides the hand. In those precious moments when the work flows harmoniously, you get the feeling that the tool is guiding the hand.

THE CHISEL

The curvature of the violin’s top and back, with their sensuous shape, is generally not bent but carved out of solid wood. The tool I use for this is a razor-sharp iron with a spoon-shaped concave cutting edge and a wooden handle just under half a meter long, the end of which is shaped like a sphere: the carving chisel. My hands guide the tool—the right hand leads, the left hand controls the pressure and slows the movement. However, the necessary force is not generated by the hands or arms, but by the abdominal muscles. The arms alone would tire too quickly when carving the hard wood. That is why the spherical end of the handle rests against the strong abdominal muscles, allowing the iron to be guided using the full force of the body.

I had my chisel forged back then at one of the famous tool forges in the Stubai Valley; an old master woodturner made the handle out of cherry wood to go with it. You have to start with the coarsest possible chisel and then work your way to finer ones; that’s the only way the curve gets its character, and you don’t lose your way.

THE GLASS RUNNER

I produce the color pigments for my violin varnish by reacting madder root with potash, alum, aluminum sulfate, zinc sulfate, and iron sulfate. This requires some experience, because depending on the type of salts used, the resulting color can be dark brown, reddish-brown, orange, deep red, or golden yellow.

To finely grind the pigments afterward, I need the glass roller. Using the flat-ground surface of the glass rod, I move it in slow, circular motions across the glass plate coated with pigment slurry. This grinds the precious pigment down to a micrometer-fine grain size. You have to check the fineness of the pigment with your ears: After a few minutes, the initial roughness of the grinding gives way to an increasingly distinct, high-pitched hissing sound. Only then has the pigment reached the necessary fineness. This fineness has a major influence on the transparency and luminosity of the lacquer finish. I apply the pigments using a technique already known to the old masters of the Renaissance. In addition to the binder, a special spreading brush is required—a technique that demands a great deal of practice to master. The pigments serve no acoustic purpose. They are used for beauty.

THE BAND SAW

With its nearly five-meter-long, continuous saw blade, the band saw is the largest machine in my workshop. The blade is made of hardened Ikarus steel, which gives it a longer service life. I can tell by the vibrations of the saw table whether the band is properly adjusted. I can tell by the sound and smell of the cut when it’s no longer sharp enough. Over many hours, I use the band saw to cut the wedge-shaped top and back halves for the next violins, violas, and cellos from the large, quartered log sections with millimeter precision.

The scent of freshly cut wood regularly fills me with a sense of euphoria. Now, at last, the wood’s grain is becoming visible: along the radial medullary rays, this fine tonewood reveals its very own oily sheen.

I feel gratitude and awe, for the wood in my hands is a gift bestowed upon me by the mighty and magnificent trees of the high-altitude mountain forests. It has grown for nearly two centuries. Now it is being transformed into sound. It is beginning its second life.

THE HALTERS

The neck gouges are a set of twelve hollow gouges of varying widths. I use them to carve the scroll (the “neck”) of my violins, violas, and cellos. The widths of the gouges range from 4 to 30 millimeters. This way, I have a suitable chisel for every groove width and every curve radius. I had my set of neck chisels forged during my apprenticeship in the Stubai Valley, which is famous worldwide for its blacksmithing craftsmanship.

To find the right iron more quickly when they’re all lying on the workbench at the same time, I had each handle turned from a different type of wood—the light, deep-red bubinga, the hard, beautiful jacaranda, the deep-black ebony with white sapwood, boxwood, and a few native fruitwoods.

Back then, I designed the handles so that the hand would have a flexible piece of iron to grip during each of the necessary steps. That’s why the handles have a round knob on the back, so you can guide them with your thumb, much like a chisel.

They have a groove on the front so you can guide them like a pencil—much like a woodcut. I keep them sharp with the Belgian whetstone. They hang behind me on my toolboard.

THE BENDING IRON

In earlier centuries of violin making, the bending iron was placed in glowing coals before use. Today, it is electrically heated. Its purpose, however, has not changed: it is used to bend the delicate, slightly moistened maple sides and lining strips of the side ring under heat.

Cold wood would inevitably break if one tried to bend it into such tight curves as the violin’s shape requires. Heat and moisture, however, cause the lignin in the cells to become pliable. This causes the wood fibers to yield, and the otherwise brittle wood bends readily. Only heat makes the wood malleable. Beginners are often apprehensive about this step. But if they lack determination, the sides—which have been painstakingly planed to the correct thickness—will break. For only with sufficient, bold pressure can the sides be successfully drawn around the hot bending iron using the bending plate. Only then is sufficient tension transferred from the outer fibers of the sides to the bending plate, and the lateral wood of the sides takes on the curved shape of the violin’s outline.

THE POLISHING CLOTH

After weeks of applying primer, pore filler, oil varnish, and pigments in many layers, one of the most beautiful stages of violin making begins: the delicate polishing of the varnish. As you do this, your hand feels the shape of the violin you have created. Polishing is much more like a massage. It gives the varnish its inner fire, and the wood begins to glow. The tool used for this is unassuming, and yet the tool that is now brought into play is one of the most important and personal in the violin’s development: the polishing cloth made of sturdy linen. The older it is, the better. Its age and the hours of use have made it soft and supple, and have evened out its texture. It is moistened with alcohol, folded in half, and then rolled and pulled between the fingers so that the moisture can spread into every fiber.

After making a few circles in the air, I placed it gently but firmly on the painted surface. If this is done too slowly or with too much pressure, the paint will peel off and the work will be ruined. If the pressure or moisture is too low, it will have no effect. Speed, moisture, and pressure must all be in harmony.

THE BOW

In the Arab cultural sphere at the end of the 9th century, a stringed instrument was, for the first time, no longer plucked—as had been the custom for millennia of human cultural history—but was instead played with a bow strung with horsehair: the rabab was born. Thanks to its sensual tone, its melody soon conquered Europe as well. In the 16th century, the modern violin as we know it today finally emerged in northern Italy from a wide variety of bowed predecessors. The moving art of sound, which consists of setting a twisted gut string into vibration using horsehair coated with rosin, is, from a physical standpoint, a highly refined form of squeaking—the so-called stick-slip effect. Static and sliding friction between the horsehair and the string alternate continuously due to the colophony resin, which periodically melts into and cools within the hair cuticles.

The resonant frequency of the taut string, along with its series of harmonic overtones, triggers this vibration, making the pitch and timbre corresponding to this fascinating periodic process audible. The bow stick is crafted from fine pernambuco wood and tensioned using an ebony frog. To this day, the bow is made from the tail hair of Mongolian gray stallions.

THE PULL-ALONG TOYS

In the craft of violin making, the violin top is not sanded with sandpaper but is always smoothed with scrapers. It is a challenging process to bring out the best in the surface in this way. The result, however, is well worth the effort, as the tracheids of the spruce wood ultimately glow three-dimensionally when light hits them.

Sandpaper, no matter how fine-grained it may be, leaves a dull sheen because sanding tears the wood fibers. However, if the angle of attack is correct, the scrapers can cut through the fibers. At the same time, the pressure exerted by the blades closes the open tracheids by pressing down the microscopically fine cell wall caps. This creates an attractive visual sheen.

Every violin maker cuts and grinds his own scrapers—in accordance with his “signature style”: beak-shaped blades for the scroll curves, egg-shaped blades for the chamfers, and large oval blades for the convex, elongated sections of the arch. The sharply ground and finely honed bevel of the scraper is carefully bent back with a scraper steel, creating a fine burr so that the wood grain can be scraped—or, as it is correctly called, “cleaned.”

THE FINE SAW

I use my Japanese fine saws for all precise cuts, such as cutting the scroll curves into the solid neck block of the violin, which is made of maple. Due to the reverse rake of the teeth, the direction of the cut is also reversed: Unlike in the European tradition—for example, with a handsaw—the Asian fine saw cuts on the pull rather than on the push. The wood is therefore not removed at the moment the arm is pushed away from the body—as in a boxing motion—but at the moment the arm is pulled toward the body. In planing as well, Asian traditions do not work by pushing, but by pulling.

Since the saw blade cannot buckle at the moment the tensile force is applied—unlike during a push cut—but rather, on the contrary, the tensile force actually stabilizes the thin saw blade, the blade of the fine saw can be made extremely thin, thereby allowing for extremely fine cuts. It can be used to cut very close to the final dimension.

THE PAINT BRUSH

I apply the pigments for my violin varnish—which I make from madder roots according to a recipe I’ve refined over the years—to the curved surface of the primed violin using a goat-hair spreading brush after applying the varnish wet. Like chalk, the pigments are enveloped by the oil varnish—a 17th-century linseed oil and amber resin formula. This gives the varnish its visual depth. If everything has turned out well, it appears three-dimensional and enhances the wood. Since the varnish is permeated by micrometer-fine pigments—and thus intentionally by refractions of light—its color takes on a different character at every time of day—golden, orange, and reddish-honey brown.

When applying the pigments and varnish, I use a wide variety of brushes—mostly handmade—but also my fingertips and the palm of my hand. That makes it more lively. The most important thing is a supple, springy hand movement. It has to be playful. That way, the work absorbs the joy of the hands and radiates it through its dignity and beauty.