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I have some questions for those of you who have made/make violins. I'm planning on making one for my mum, but as I'm a bit of an anti-traditionalist, I really don't want to make it out of maple like every other violin in the world. So I was thinking about doing it in wenge with a cedar top (Or possibly spruce, I haven't decided yet). Can anyone tell me any reasons why this wouldn't work?
Also, I've been thinking of making the fingerboard and neck out of wenge too. Is this a really bad idea? Would you be constantly getting splinters? I've seen guitars with wenge fingerboards, but the frets sort of keep your fingers off the surface of the board. I'm guessing your fingers are more in contact with the board on a violin.

Thanks

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

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If you use wenge and WRC be careful when fitting the sound post - both of those woods split more easily than spruce and maple. for the fingerboardyou could use a penetrating epoxy to hold down splinters and fill the pores. As an anti-traditionalist maybe you could make a Savart style box fiddle (on my to do list).

Too heavy. Sorry, not good. Use light wood with similar density. Spruce or pine top, maple back can be substituted with birch, poplar, cotonwood, sycamore, etc. Fingerboard can be wenge if you smoothe it and perhaps use CA glue or epoxy to pore fill.

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Ken

Have you built a traditional violin? I only ask because sometimes there is a good reason for tradition. Isn't there a lot of carving for the top and back? You'll want a wood that is good for that.

Thanks for the replies. I realise wenge will be harder to carve and more prone to cracking, but I think those problems are still work-aroundable. As to it being too heavy, I'm not sure I understand. Woods like wenge, rosewood, ebony are used all the time for guitars as well as mahogany on the other end of the weight scale. This simply colours the sound in different ways. Won't it do the same for a violin?

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_________________
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Ok I know a bit about Fiddle making having shared a shop with a couple of those scrolly lot.
Western Red is a bit on the soft side. A fiddle doesn't normally have binding, the edges are prone to wear and getting knocked. Spruce will hold up much better. The soundpost and the bridge feet have a tendency to dig in, WRC will really suffer. Don't forget that over time bridges tilt and people don't always put them back where they need to be. You could probably inlay some spruce in those areas but. . . what's the point. More work and you should be able to get a Spruce blank cheap enough. There's a lot of work in a fiddle, countless hours if you take everything into account such as mould, template and tool making. I wouldn't go too far off the beaten track if I were in your shoes. WRC has certainly been used for a fiddle but I'm not sure it's the wisest of choices.
Of course Maple is the traditional wood for the Back/Sides and the Neck. Others were and have been used - Beech, Poplar being two. I've actually played on a Beech Violin and it didn't sound bad at all, quite a lovely tone.
Cherry should be suitable, it's about the same density as Maple. Not too difficult to carve.
Save the Wenge for the fingerboard, not the Neck or the Back/Sides. Make your life a little easier and use a wood that is much easier to carve - either Maple (plain is fine) or Cherry, something of that ilk. Wenge would be a pain, there's a lot of carving type work on a Violin. Wenge is obviously more brittle than something like Maple or Cherry, more prone to chipping out. I did this scroll years ago, my first. There's no way that I would have used something like Wenge on a first.

In the uk norway maple can be substitiuted for sycamore, or cherry, some builders use fruitwoods pear,and walnut have been used for backs . For tops spruce is traditional ,wood wrc is too soft. 1/4 sawn pine can be substitiuted or??

Thanks Michael and Ernie. Good point about it having no binding - hadn't thought of that. Spruce it is for the top then.
The reason I wanted to use wenge is its dark colour and its a lot cheaper than rosewood. It's going to have a black and white theme and I prefer to leave wood natural rather than staining.
While looking into the Savart box fiddles Clay mentioned, I came across Danny Ferrington and his simple bent top violins. I might do something along those lines, then there'd be no carving required.



Or this

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

I came across this vid and wanted to share it but did not have a proper thread to post into, seems like it might fit in this one.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SvfNhMlnBE[/youtube]

OK, which part of the link do I delete?

I have not made a violin yet, only about a half dozen guitars. But my instrument building journey is similar to an ant's travels, all over the place and not in a straight line. In trying to educate myself on why a guitar sounds like a guitar some of the material veered into the violin making field. Seems that the violin works a bit differently than the guitar, primarily because of the constant input of energy from the bow and in using a sound post to transfer energy from the top to the back (among many other differences). A lot of sound does come from the back of the violin and the back seems to need to be a little flexible for it to put out the low end of its frequency range. I get the feeling that Wenge would be too stiff and may bleed off from the top and produce too many highs and give no lows.

I seem to recall reading that Maple works well as it does have the proper amount of dampening for the instrument (or did the instrument shape develop into what it is due to the characteristics of Maple?). Too resonant a wood would keep the notes resonating when the player has moved on to another one. A different animal compared to a guitar. Having handled Wenge on the weekend, went through a stack of shorts to see if I could find some pieces for backs and sides, the whole time being careful not to catch a splinter as they have a reputation for being unhealthy. I would think carving the wood would produce a few splinters and no matter how careful you are some will get away on you to surface at a later date. I might be over cautious but doing many things the wrong way over years might be the cause.

On the flip side I think someone made an arch top with Wenge, so maybe it can be sculpted. Still think it is wrong acoustically. Mind you a number of people said I was using the wrong wood on a few of my guitars and they really did not turn out that bad. Keep us posted.

You have to remove the s from https:// for this forum software to recognize the link.

Another option for a wenge back is to make it flat rather than carving it. Like a viola da gamba. Probably would make it sound even less like a violin... but just because that sound has been perfected, doesn't mean that other tonalities are bad and something to avoid. Especially for a newbie who won't be able to produce the exact traditional violin tone anyway.

And who says you can't do binding too? And larger bridge feet and soundpost so they don't dent the cedar.

There's no reason why you can't make it like a medieval style fiddle. Just use 4 strings instead of the 5 that they normally use. That has flat plates, pretty simple construction. Your Wenge won't be a problem. Of course Gut strings are used but there's no reason why you can't use modern types. It will probably sound a lot closer to a modern Violin than a medieval one if you do that. Keep the box small for Violin sound, larger if you want a Viola sound.
There are also Violins made very much in the shape of a Guitar, both carved and flat plate types. Anything is possible if you don't mind moving away from the traditional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPKhBkLgFLk

I've made a number of violins and fiddles from non-traditional woods over the past 35 years. WRC works OK for tops, but redwood is a bit better, since it has a harder surface. Both tend to split more easily than spruce, and that is an issue for sound post cracks down the line. The only work around I know of that might help there is the little patch of maple veneer that Joe Curtin uses at the post location. He puts a .3mm maple veneer there to help keep the post from denting the top, but it could also help prevent cracks, An even better way might be to just do a normal post crack repair pre-emptively, using spruce, but that's a pain.

So far the best substitute back material I've found is Black Walnut, although Claro might be as good or better. It's the closest in properties to soft maple, for one thing. You can find curly walnut reasonably easily. One advantage of it is that you don't need to use a colored varnish. Of course, the violin crowd will turn up their noses, but you're not worried about that. apparently. I have yet to find any cherry that's as light and soft as European maple, and it ends up being too heavy. The cherry fiddles tend to hang around for a while, where the walnut ones sell pretty quickly.
I would never use wenge for a fiddle, which, in the New England climate, is known among the local luthiers as 'crack wood'. Aside from the extra work involved, you're just asking for trouble.

Lots of folks try to re-invent the wheel early in their careers. Often enough it's somebody trying to improve the guitar by copying some feature from the 'perfect' violin. Either way, you have to understand that the two instruments work very differently, and the designs have been worked out over many years by some pretty smart and highly motivated folks to work about as well as could be expected. The violin has been designed around the properties of soft maple and spruce, and the closer you hew to those lines the more likely you are to end up with something that works well. It's possible to make swaps, but it's tricky to make them work well, and you need to have a pretty fair understanding of how these things work to get it to happen.

I happen to own an Al Carruth black walnut 5 string fiddle. When I commissioned it, I left the wood choices up to Al. It turns out that he made two fiddles, one out of black walnut and the other out of cherry. He gave me my choice and I chose the Walnut. It was richer and a bit lighter than the cherry. I've been very happy with my choice.
The cherry had a "dry" sound to it. It sounded very good but not particularly interesting. Over the last 6 years I've had an opportunity to play the cherry now and then and I'm wondering if I made the right choice. The walnut seems to have lost a bit of brightness (it might just need new strings) whereas the cherry has blossomed into a well balanced fiddle. The walnut still looks prettier IMHO.

No reason at all you can't work with non-traditional woods....so long as you're ok with it possibly not sounding like a traditional violin, and don't expect accolades from the traditional violin-maker crowd! I've thought of black walnut, my biggest concerns being its ability to accept a gouge and be worked with finger planes. You will likely need to cut your own blanks also, as I found most all violin stock to be of only traditional woods.

dave f