Day 1: Beware of the Cello

I picked this prophetic block out of the box of random bits to clamp down this section of rib for planing.

A very hard and hot day of work! First activity was to mark out the outline on the end of the blocks which were attached to the mould before my arrival.  This is done in the rough with a cleaver and mallet, then by hand with a gouge, only doing the curves on the inside of the C bouts (the ones in the middle).  Next was to scrape and plane the three strips of maple for the ribs.  Fortunately they were cut fairly thin anyway, around 1.7mm, it took most of the day to get them down to the 1.4mm they need to be.  Quite thin really!  You've no idea how much effort it takes to remove 0.05mm in thickness from one of these things. And they seem to grow back after you've planed them. Spooky.

First job tomorrow will be to cut the ribs to generous length, and to bend and fix the C bouts.  Also in the near future will be to join the pieces of the back and maybe the front.

Phew. A really enjoyable day.  My feet are killing me, and I'm really tired.  Fortunately it's that lovely, well earned, have a bath and go to bed kind of tired.

Rough shaping of the blocks with a cleaver 

Shaping the blocks - halfway there.

Getting the ribs down to the right thickness. Use a plane!  It takes forever with a scraper!

On your marks...

The mould with rough blocks fitted. On top of this are the two spruce blocks for the belly, and the maple strips for the bouts. The back pieces are behind.

The first meeting of the course was this afternoon in the workshop.  After tea, introductions and housekeeping announcements, those of us who are new to all this stayed behind while Kit Beamish, talked to us about some of the basics, and filled us in on our first task for tomorrow, which is to shape the blocks in the mould so that they follow the outline of the instrument.  We also got to meet our pieces of maple and spruce, that with a lot of time and effort, we're hopefully going to turn into working instruments.

So tomorrow morning, it's on with the show!

Can you see what it is yet?  This will be the pegbox and scroll.

Not how I plan to do it...

I know that someone built a lego harpsichord, that works (for some value of works), now Nathan Sawaya has built a cello from lego.  Unfortunately this one doesn't seem to work for any non-zero value of work.  It's great, but the bar has been set by the lego harpsichord, so we not only expect lego instruments to play, we expect to hear them sound hilariously clunky too.

I'm going to stick to traditional materials for mine, though that doesn't mean it won't sound hilariously clunky...

The Task

When I was 13 years old, I build a lute from an Early Music Shop kit which back in the day cost all of £45 (£386.45 now - and they've grown another course).  My instrument was pretty ropey, but worked, and it left me very interested in building instruments. Between then and now, of course, life happened.

Relatively recently I discovered that the Cambridge Violin Workshop run courses in violin, viola and cello making, and I'd had the chance to play a cello made by a work colleague at their workshop, and hear other instruments made by their students.  Seems silly not to give it a try.

So, I've signed up for the 2011 summer course, which naturally won't lead to a finished cello in a week, but it will lead to a started cello, and then night classes and so forth, should, eventually lead to a finished cello.  I thought it would be a good idea to use a blog to document the process, and my progress.  Wish me luck!