Commissioned Handmade Five-string Fiddle Beginning

Starting a new 5-String Fiddle

The Materials:

A few weeks ago I announced that a new fiddle would be beginning. Now I have a few photos to show:

The top plate is Sitka Spruce, from Bruce Harvie. The customer wanted “Oregon wood,” and the Big Leaf Maple is definitely from in my neighborhood, here in Oregon (I helped harvest it;) but the Sitka is just a species that grows here…I don’t know where it was harvested.

Wild-grain Big Leaf Maple for Five-string fiddle back and ribs! — Wild-grain Maple for back and ribs!

Fine-grained Sitka Spruce for Five-string fiddle top plate. — Fine-grained Sitka Spruce for the top plate.

Preview of the grain in the Five-string fiddle neck billet. — Preview of the grain in the neck billet.

Beginning the work of building a 5-string fiddle:

I book-matched the spruce, to form the basis for the front plate: a solid plate with a tight glue-line down the center.

I used the mold (or form, as many people prefer to call it) that matched the fiddle the customer liked best. Then I added willow blocks to become the corners and end-blocks, and I traced the intended shape of the blocks from the mold template onto the back-side of the blocks, where they are flush with the mold.

Blocks and mold with Five-string fiddle template. — Blocks and mold with template.

Five-string fiddle Preliminary block-shaping complete. — Preliminary block-shaping complete.

Added the ribs, of the spalted maple the customer liked, and glued them to the willow blocks. Afterward, I added linings, also of willow, and let them into the blocks and glued them to the ribs and the blocks.

Spalted Maple ribs and willow linings on beginning of Five-string fiddle. — Spalted Maple ribs and willow linings.

Five-string fiddle Rib garland nearly complete. — Rib garland nearly complete.

Then I traced the shape of the garland onto the top plate material, using a small washer as a spacer, and a ball-point pen as a scribe. I completed the corners using a straightedge and a series of circle templates. Finally, I marked the edge at exactly 4 mm thick, and carved the arching, using gouges and planes and scrapers.

Sitka top-plate arching complete for Five-string fiddle. — Sitka top-plate arching complete.

Then I marked the layout of the double purfling and the f-holes, and began incising them into the Sitka Spruce.

F-holes and purfling traced and cutting begun for Five-string fiddle. — F-holes and purfling traced and cutting begun.

Sometime in the midst of all the above work, I laid out and began carving the scroll and pegbox. That wild grain is very tricky to carve, as it changes direction constantly.

Rough-carved scroll and pegbox of Five-string fiddle. — Rough-carved scroll and pegbox.

I went ahead and completed the purfling and the f-holes, so that I could prepare the plate to be glued to the garland.

Completed top plate and neck work with garland for Five-string fiddle. — Completed top plate and neck work with garland.

I also added the bass-bar, chalk-fitting it to perfection, and gluing it in place, with hot hide glue. The bass-bar will be carved, planed and scraped to the proper shape after the glue dries.

Five-string fiddle Bass-bar glued and clamped. — Bass-bar glued and clamped.

Five-string fiddle Top plate glued and clamped to the garland, fingerboard glued to the neck. — Top plate glued and clamped to the garland, fingerboard glued to the neck.

The fingerboard is Ipé, as requested by the customer. It is an extremely dense hardwood, but not threatened as Ebony is beginning to be. It finishes to a dark brown and looks good, as well as wearing well. It is extremely difficult to work, though, so it may take time to become popular with makers. The saddle and the nut will also be Ipé, but the pegs will be ebony, simply because I have never mastered the lathe-turning of tuning pegs.

Working on the fingerboard for the Five-string fiddle. — Working on the fingerboard.

And that is pretty much where things stand, for now. I will try to post pictures as they become available.

Thanks for looking.

June 22, 2019June 22, 2019

June 22nd Progress Report

Some Progress is better than none!

It has been a frustrating series of weeks: all the usual responsibilities, house guests, etc., plus a few unexpected items. The lawn tractor suddenly quit mowing, though it ran fine. We narrowed it down to being a bad PTO clutch, so that is just another thing to take apart and replace. Guess that’s what happens when you use 30-year-old equipment. 🙂

Then, two days ago, my beloved better half, Ann, discovered that the side porch steps are in advanced stages of rot…so, today, we went and bought all the pressure-treated lumber to replace them. They, too, have been in place for over 30 years, so, I guess, they have served well.

Progress on the 5-String Fiddles

I did manage to make a little progress on some of the acoustic five-string fiddles I had begun, however:

All the linings are in place for two of the instruments (violin and the 14-7/8″ viola.)
The front and back plates are traced and cut out for both of those instruments.
The front plate graduations are complete for the 14″ viola, and
The f-holes are cut out on the 14″ viola, but not refined.

So, this is where things stand, at the moment:

Here is the “Strobelesque” garland with its front and back plates:

garland and plates — Rib Garland and rough-cut plates for the “Strobelesque” fiddle.

No carving at all has been done on the plates, and the Sitka Spruce front plate is still nearly an inch thick. I will plane it down before I begin arching, of course. I do like the look of the spalted maple back and ribs. This maple was from an old Big Leaf Maple tree on the property where Ann grew up. It had begun to show signs of decay, and was removed for safety’s sake. Too bad for the loss of the tree, but it is nice wood.

Here is the 14-7/8″ Viola garland with its front and back plates.

garland with plates — Rib garland with front and back plates for a 14-7/8″ 5-string viola.

This one is my own design. In fact, it was the very first form I ever made, thinking I was just going to make a viola for my youngest son (whose name is on the form, along with the date: 1999.) As it happened, I discovered that lutherie is addictive, and I have been building instruments ever since. 🙂

The center-lines on both plates are ink, not a glue-line: this instrument boasts both a one-piece Spalted (Big-Leaf) Maple back plate (also from the tree at Ann’s childhood home) and a one-piece Sitka Spruce front plate.

Here is the progress on the 14″ Viola:

This one is my own design, too: it is the same length as a standard violin, but much wider in the lower bouts, and deeper in the ribs. It will be interesting to see how it works as a five-string fiddle. (This is a first.) This one has an Englemann Spruce front plate and a one-piece Big Leaf Maple back from a log I was given by Terry Howell, years ago.

I will post more reports as the work takes place. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.

Thanks for looking.

June 6, 2019June 2, 2020

Four Five-String Fiddles

Five-String Fiddles Progress Report

The last time I presented anything about these instruments, I think it was on another site, so– here is how they looked at that time (earlier this week, perhaps.)

Blocks and C-bout ribs installed. Blocks installed, and necks cut out.

In the above photo, all you can see is three violin forms, with blocks installed, and some of the wood that will go into each, including the necks. I already had a fourth instrument (a small viola) begun, which was not in the picture.

So, here is that 14″ 5-string viola, well on the way to completion, but still with a long way to go…as of today.

And, as promised, here is a progress report on the other three:

On this instrument, the ribs are installed, but no linings as yet, and, while the Maple and Spruce have been selected for the front and back plates, they are essentially untouched. The neck has been traced out and the outline cut, but it, too, has far to go.

Guarneri-form 5-string fiddle in progress.

For this instrument, a five-string fiddle being built on the form of the 1735 “Plowden” Guarneri del Gesu, I had a top plate left from a previous project on the same form, so I opted to use it, with the spalted Big Leaf Maple back and ribs. No linings, yet, but they have been bent and are ready to install. The neck is from a different Big Leaf Maple, which came from the yard of the property where my wife grew up.

5-string fiddle on “Strobelesque” form, in progress.

Henry (Senior) would not have recognized this form, but it was loosely derived from the form in Henry Strobel’s book, “Violin-making, Step-by-Step”…so it is called “Strobelesque.” In this photo, the glue was not dry on the treble-side upper rib, but I didn’t want to wait, so I took the photo with the clamps still in place. Again, no linings, yet, but they are bent and ready to install. Here, too, I had a partially completed top plate, and elected to use it. The back and sides are heavily spalted Big Leaf Maple, and the neck is also Big Leaf Maple, though from a different tree…the one in my Father-in-Law’s yard. A few years ago, they decided that tree had enough rot to be dangerous, so they took it out, but it provided wood for a number of instruments.

My son Brian Bishop builds high-quality guitars, and managed to salvage several guitar sets beside the various violin and viola sets I saved. I got one cello set out of it, too…it will become a cello for my beloved wife.

Thanks for looking.

April 22, 2019June 2, 2020

Why a Five-String Fiddle?

Why not a Five String Fiddle?

Traditioooonnn, Tradition!!

Violins have been codified in terms of form, size, materials and tuning for over 400 years. Orchestras have 30+ violins, between which the untrained observer would have a difficult time distinguishing, let alone identifying as having come from a particular maker’s hand. And yet experts can frequently tell at a glance when, where and by whom that violin was made. And ALL of them have four strings (count ‘em): G, D, A, and E. No five-string violins in the orchestra!

The violas, too, have their four strings, always at C, G, D and A. They are less tightly defined, however and are all over the board in terms of size and shape. Some are so large that most normal-sized people can’t play them, and some are not much larger than a violin. But they all have those four strings, tuned exactly a perfect fifth below those of the violin. No five-string violas, either.

NON-traditional is OK, too.

Really, a viola works best at what it does, and a violin works best at what it does, as specialized tools…but when they are so close in size—indeed, sometimes overlapping—what prevents us from having one instrument that covers the full range of both? A five-string fiddle?

Well…that isn’t as easy as it sounds. The physical size of a violin is barely big enough to really produce the open G-string tone, so simply adding a low C-string will not work well…and the viola is almost too big to make good high-pitched notes, so adding a high E to a larger viola is usually not very satisfactory either.

Five-string fiddles specifically designed for five-strings

But it CAN work…with some tweaking. Honestly, probably a five-string fiddle would work best in the size of a small viola—say, 15”—or even 15.5”. But country fiddlers and bluegrass fiddlers, who are waking up to the desire for a fifth string, and a lower range, don’t want a “five-string viola”–they want their instrument to fit in a regular fiddle case—not a viola case. They want a handmade five-string bluegrass fiddle.

What has worked for me, so far, is to maintain the “footprint” of a regular violin, but increase the depth of the body a little; lengthen the pegbox, obviously, for the extra peg and string; thin the plates just a little more, and deepen the bassbar a bit. I may try widening the center bouts just a little, too, sometime. But for now, I have a working model, with which everyone seems very pleased: it is very easy to play, has good balance across all five strings, a big deep bass end on the C string, and clear, strong high notes on the E string.

So, when a fiddler wants to be able to go low and growly, he/she can do so. When he/she needs a high end for some special sizzle, it is there. All in one fiddle case. A five-string fiddle case.

See samples below:

Front view of Oliver Five-string fiddle, by Chet Bishop. Sold.

Myrtle and Port Orford Cedar 5-string fiddle (Sold) — Front of Myrtle and Port Orford Cedar 5-string (Sold)

Back of Myrtle and Port Orford Cedar Five-String Fiddle. — Back of Myrtle and Port Orford Cedar 5-string