The Making of Stringed Instruments: A Workshop Guide

This guide to making stringed instruments contains over 500 diagrams together with explanatory text. It is written by a craftsman who specializes in making stringed instruments and who understands beginners' problems and who provides sensible solutions to them. The first project, a violin, gives the foundations for all the other stringed instruments in the book, including the viola, cello, mandonlin, mandola, classical guitar and jazz guitar. How to choose the right wood, tools and additional materials is explained. The techniques covered include constructing the body, carving scrolls and f holes, purfling, carving and assembling, making peg holes, using moulds, smoothing and finishing, adding linings, removing blemishes and staining. George Buchanan is author of "The Illustrated Handbook of Furniture Restoration".

Experienced woodworkers who may be interested in making a stringed instrument such as a violin, guitar, or mandolin are the audience for this book, which is in no way a beginner's guide to instrument making. The author uses the old European approach to tasks like carving, gluing, bracing, and finishing, so much so that the book might better be titled "How To Make Instruments the Old-Fashioned Way." Times have changed, however, and instrument-making supply companies now offer a variety of purpose-built tools and woodworking supplies that greatly simplify and speed up the process described here. Books like Robert Benedetto's Making an Arch Top Guitar (Centerstream, 1996), William Cumpiano's Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology (Chronicle, 1994), and Robert Alton's Violin and Cello Building and Repairing (1976) incorporate these newer approaches and would all be better choices for libraries.?Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, R.I.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.