LogoLuthier
Book a Workshop Visit
Workshop · Cremona Tradition

How a
Violin
Is Made

Scroll to begin the making

Luthier's hands pressing a gouge into a spruce top, wood curls spiraling from the blade in afternoon workshop light

Instruments in the hands of players at

Berlin PhilharmonicJuilliard SchoolRoyal Academy of MusicChicago Symphony OrchestraMenuhin CompetitionCurtis InstituteVienna PhilharmonicNew England ConservatoryQueen Elisabeth CompetitionSan Francisco SymphonyConservatoire de ParisIndianapolis Violin CompetitionBerlin PhilharmonicJuilliard SchoolRoyal Academy of MusicChicago Symphony OrchestraMenuhin CompetitionCurtis InstituteVienna PhilharmonicNew England ConservatoryQueen Elisabeth CompetitionSan Francisco SymphonyConservatoire de ParisIndianapolis Violin Competition
Chapter One

The Wood
Speaks First

Close-up macro photograph of tight parallel spruce grain lines, showing annual ring density in quartersawn tonewood

Quartersawn Bosnian spruce — annual rings at 14 per centimetre.
Cleaved, not sawn. Harvested at 1,800 m altitude.

Every instrument begins not at the bench but in the forest. The spruce for a top plate must ring when tapped — a clear, sustained tone that tells you the fibres are aligned, the density even, the resin pockets absent. I spend three days at the sawyer's yard each autumn, tapping hundreds of billets before selecting six.

The wood then waits. A minimum of eight years in the loft above the workshop, where the Adriatic humidity cycles teach it to move. Rushed wood moves unpredictably under the plane. Patient wood moves honestly.

"The tap-tone is not a test. It is a conversation — the wood telling you what it can become."

Macro detail of flamed maple back plate showing wavy grain pattern used for violin backs and ribs

Flamed Bosnian maple — back plate

Forest canopy of high-altitude spruce trees in Slovenia, source of tonewood for violin making

Alpine spruce forest — Slovenia, 1,700 m

SpeciesComponentSourceAge
Picea abiesTop plateBosnia / Slovenia12–20 yr
Acer pseudoplatanusBack, ribs, neckBosnia10–15 yr
Diospyros ebenumFingerboard, pegsSri LankaSeasoned
Salix albaBlocks, liningsNorthern Italy6–8 yr
Chapter Two

Arching &
Geometry

Cross-section · Transverse Arch · Not to scale

16–17 mmarch height62–64 mm bodyrecurve2.5–3.5 mm thickness✓✓✓Template check positions

The arch is not decoration — it is the acoustic engine. A plate arched too high becomes stiff, muffled, reluctant. Too flat and it lacks projection, collapsing under the pressure of the soundpost. The geometry I use descends from a Cremonese form I traced from a 1714 instrument, modified over twelve years of listening.

Cross-section templates are checked at seven positions along the long axis and five along the transverse. The recurve at the plate edge — that gentle reverse curve just inside the purfling channel — allows the plate to breathe, to flex under the bow without stressing the glue joint at the rib.

Tap-Tone Evaluation

Before any varnish touches the wood, the violin is assembled "in the white" and played. I hold the plate by a nodal point and tap — listening for the mode 2 and mode 5 resonances to confirm the plate is acoustically balanced. If I'm not satisfied, the arching changes.

Close-up of a violin scroll carved in the Cremonese tradition, showing the volute and chamfered pegbox edges

The Scroll — maker's signature

Violin bridge being fitted and carved to match the curvature of the top plate

Bridge fitting — gateway of vibration

Luthier using a finger plane to shape the arching of a violin top plate clamped to a workboard

Arching with a finger plane

Free Resource

The Making
Process Guide

Forty pages of annotated photography, technical diagrams, and the questions every serious player should ask when selecting a handmade instrument. Written for players, collectors, and fellow makers.

  • How to evaluate wood quality by sight and tap
  • Arching templates and how to read them
  • What a varnish layer count tells you
  • Questions to ask a maker at a workshop visit
  • How to care for a new instrument in year one

Download free — no account required

No spam. No newsletter unless you ask for one. Unsubscribe any time.

Chapter Three

Varnish &
The Mystery

Varnish is where the instrument stops being wood and begins being an object of beauty. It is also where most of the mythology in violin making lives — the "lost Cremonese recipe," the amber in Stradivari's ground coat, the question of whether varnish is acoustically beneficial or merely a necessary concession to preservation.

My varnish is oil-resin: linseed oil cooked with colophony, Venetian turpentine, and sandarac. Applied in seven to nine layers over six to eight weeks, each coat polished with fine abrasive before the next. The colour builds from a pale honey ground to the deep amber-brown of the final coats, never applied thick enough to damp the wood's vibration.

"Each coat is a decision. Too much and the instrument whispers when it should sing."

GroundDilute potassium silicate + pumiceWk 1–2
Colour 1–3Linseed oil · colophony · sandaracWk 3–5
Colour 4–7+ Venetian turpentine · walnut oilWk 5–7
FinishDiluted final coat · pumice polishWk 8

Colour build — translucent layers

Ground coat
Amber resin
Walnut extract
Dragon's blood
Final coat
Violin in the white hanging to dry after first varnish coat application, amber light catching the spruce grain

Violin No. 44 · After third coat · Week 5