Blocks on the Amati Bros. form & a 'new' plane

A chunk of willow from a local blow-down, well-aged by now, a big chisel to split the wood, a plane and square to fit them up.

The corner blocks squared on 4 sides, the two ends squared on 5 sides, ready to be glued onto the form. The nails are put in the form to hold the metal template for marking out the rib-sides (the not squared sides) of the blocks.



I'm using bottled hide-glue to hold the blocks in place. I bought a bottle of it recently to use for spot gluing the spreader wedge when rehairing bows. This is the first time I've used it for this purpose, but I don't go through a bottle very fast, and it does have a finite life.



A new-to-me tool, a Stanley No. 40 scrub plane.



I used one of these over 2 years ago at the Southern California Violin Makers Workshop, and was really impressed with it for removing wood from the outsides of the plates -- it's basically a gouge held in a plane body. I've missed a few on eBay, but recently set my mind to getting one. I am no expert at dating these, and am happy to stand corrected, but it appears to match those made around 1890. The forward tote appears to be a replacement. It could use a little cleaning up and fine tuning, but works as is.

Amati Bros, part 5

Cleaned up the edges to an acceptable level, then made the block cut-outs and drilled the clamp holes. This is essentially the end of the process for the form. Next step is to fit the blocks, then the ribs. The ribs will determine the top and back outline.

Amati Bros, part 4

On to making the mould itself, first step is to get the template on the wood, in this case good grade birch plywood, and trace around it.



I think the outline looks good; now to see if I can get it cut out as well.





With bandsaw, rasps, knives, planes, I manage to get the outline to near the scribe line. It's the end of the day, so I'll finish it later, trying to get all the edges square and the curves flowing. The corners will be cut out to receive the blocks, as will notches at the end and neck.

Amati Bros, part 3

I glued a copy of my drawing onto a thin sheet of metal, intending to cut out a half template. As I got working on it though, I decided to keep it a full template, and make a half-template of the 'better' side, whichever that was. So far, I've kept it to a full-template.

In his book Traite de Lutherie, Francois Denis writes of this Brothers Amati form: "This model is particularly noteworthy because it has been a major source of inspiration for all instrument makers after Nicolo Amati, son of Hieronimus Amati, who used it extensively himself."

I happen to have the December 1996 issue of The Strad magazine which has a poster of a 1666 Nicolo Amati violin with photos at full-size. I thought it would be interesting to compare this drawing (which I made following Denis' book) to the poster. It wasn't bad, at least to my eye.