Inside out plates

**Chadmills** · Feb-01-2009, 5:44pm

With full credit to the OP of a thread over at fiddlehangout, here's an interesting link to a "The Strad" magazine about carving violin plates inside first.
http://www.thestrad.com/images/ArchingAug06.pdf

As most here will know, Roger Siminoff has been advocating this method for a long time.

The FiddleHangout thread is at
http://www.fiddlehangout.com/forum/t...?TOPIC_ID=7172

(Hope you're all well here, I've been concentrating on a completely different family of instruments for the last year or so, and so neglecting the mandolin world.)
Tom

**grandmainger** · Feb-01-2009, 6:02pm

I might have just over-generalised, but I was under the impression that most builders carved the inside first, if only because it's so much easier to stabilise the plate to carve the second side.

**Bill Snyder** · Feb-01-2009, 6:12pm

I think most mandolin luthiers carve the outside first. That way they get the arching and look they want first then match the inside up.

**grandmainger** · Feb-01-2009, 6:42pm

Is that so

? Funny! I just followed Siminoff's book and assumed everyone was doing the same :D

**Bill Snyder** · Feb-01-2009, 6:47pm

I have no way of knowing what percentage of builders do the inside or outside first. I know that there have been a thread or two where several professional builders weighed in on which they did first and more of the respondants in those threads did the outside first. Small sampling and based only on builders responding. I don't think the findings would hold up to statistacal sampling standards but I suspect they reflect what most pros do.

**Stephanie Reiser** · Feb-01-2009, 8:16pm

Not that it matters what I do, coz I ain't a pro builder, but I always carve the outside first. And according to Chris Johnson and Roy Courtnall, as outlined in their fine book The Art Of Violin Making, in Chapter 10, the Newark School of Violin Making in England teaches carving the outside of the plate first as well. But I suppose that there are several ways to accomplish the same task.

**Dale Ludewig** · Feb-01-2009, 8:40pm

For me, outside first. Then they look the same. Graduate on the inside. I don't assume most builders do it this way, but I would bet that they do. MHO.

**Gail Hester** · Feb-01-2009, 9:33pm

Dale, I sure do.

Actually I use a duplicarver and start on the underside to hog out some material so it lies flat when I flip it over to do the outside. Once the final hand carving/graduating begins I don't see how you could carve the underside first.

**Michael Lewis** · Feb-02-2009, 2:40am

Whatever method you become familiar with is what you will most probably use. I have become most comfortable with carving the outside first, though I did try carving the inside first once, and was supremely frustrated trying to control the shapes that were not yet in my head.

**Graham McDonald** · Feb-02-2009, 2:54am

I could see some logic in carving the inside first in a production environment where each plate was meant to come out the same and there was a machine doing it. But it makes more sense to me for a one-off or small production set up to do the outside first.

As a matter of curiosity, how mechanized are/were Gibson in carving plates? In Loar's day was the rough carving done by machine and the 'tuning' done by hand or was there a team of carvers chopping the soundboards and backs out by hand? I have not come across any information on how the Gibson mandolins were actually constructed. Any leads on this?

cheers

graham