Blog Posts

Ute Zahn ~ Violin Maker

Ute Zahn, Violin Maker

Violafest

6/10/2016

This has been a very busy year for me, at the school as well as in my studio, not to mention the ever-present needs of string players around the world LSF is trying to respond to. When my colleague Bill Scott offered me the chance to share a table at the American Viola Society's "Festival of the Viola" in Oberlin, OH, I was therefore quite excited ... about the idea of being able to just sit somewhere quietly for a few days.
I wasn't quite prepared for hordes of excited violists, keyed-up after so many engrossing, inspiring and thought-provoking seminars, master classes and rehearsals, eagerly descending on the violas on show, sometimes en masse.

Of course, there isn't a maker alive who doesn't delight in the opportunity to hear their instrument played by accomplished musicians. I had the chance to hear my viola played in Warner Hall by violist Elias Goldstein, an exciting experience -- it isn't always possible for me to arrange a concert hall for instrument try-outs. To read Laurie Niles' article about the great viola play-off, click here.

Sam Edwards trying out my viola

The Wrap

6/12/2015

While the cast was drying out, I got busy making a new top block -- here it is, complete with the original label from which I painstakingly scraped the old block, fiber by fiber.

This week, I have been working all sorts of hours in order to fit and glue the patch, give everything a thorough final inspection, glue the body together, and re-set the neck before my annual journey to the Holy Land, otherwise known as the Violin Maker's Workshop in Oberlin, Ohio. Every year, I have noble intentions of arriving there with all my prep work intact and all my tools sharpened. This has yet to happen, but hope springs eternal. Meanwhile, I am happy I'll have my cello back to play on within a few days of arriving back here -- the Hungarian interlude, lovely as it was, concludes today.

Kid's Play

5/27/2015

Now that the cracks in my cello are stabilized, it's time to think about preparing for the patch. To this end, I've made a partial plaster cast of the top of the instrument, which is a messy process involving a bag of rice, a vacuum cleaner, and some play-dough. This is where I found out that childhood has come a long way since I last played with the stuff -- the only goo available at my local Target was scented.
Apple-flavoured cast, anyone? (I opted for the strawberry, thinking I might want to actually play with the apple).

The cello top, ready for the plaster

As per usual, I ended up with splotches of plaster in unexpected places, but the actual cast turned out quite nicely. It is, of course, possible to make castings from other, neater, faster-to-use materials, but I've always got more accurate castings and, as a result, better-fitting patches with plaster.

While I'm waiting for it to dry out, I'll make a new top block, and prepare the piece of wood for the patch. With any luck, I'll have a big enough piece of the original spruce left over from when I was making the instrument. (It would be asking too much for me to have marked it with the year and model ... I didn't think that far ahead when I was 20).

If you look closely, you can see the outline of the bridge feet, the cracks, and a few grain lines.
Meanwhile, in my garden a pair of wrens are busy building an entirely different structure, something I could happily spend many hours watching. But there is a violin to be built, so back to the workbench it is.

Smile, Luthiers!

5/24/2015

Great news: I'm so excited to let you know that "Luthiers sans Frontieres" has joined "amazon smile", a program that offers amazon customers the opportunity to support a non-profit of their choice through their amazon purchases, and at no extra cost.
Next time you use amazon, please consider spending a few extra seconds to follow the prompts for "amazon smile" and select "Luthiers sans Frontieres" from the list of participating non-profits, and you, too, could put a tool into the hands of an aspiring violin maker in the Third World!
And thank you.

The meat of it

5/21/2015

Once all the old glue and the blackish gunk was cleaned off the ribs and top, I glued the soundpost crack -- the culprit at the bottom of this whole enterprise. It was only as I was working glue into the crack that I noticed there was rather more movement than anticipated -- there was a second, much smaller crack parallel to the first, well hidden by the dramatic gash the bridge foot had made as it crashed into the top, and further obscured by crusty varnish crinkles in the bridge foot area (created by the bridge moving, or being moved, around when the varnish is still fresh).
Oh well, at this point, what difference does it make?
On a much happier note, despite another cold snap (May in Minnesota is different from May in other places), my blade? shoot? reed, I suppose, of equisetum has shot up to about eight inches tall, and another very skinny and tender-looking shoot has tentatively poked out of the pot. I crouch over it, whispering encouraging words ("it will get warmer, it will get easier, it will get better.")

At long last ...

5/20/2015

... the school year is over, which has freed up my time somewhat. Enough to finally start on the big cello repair. To that end, I have taken my cello apart, something I last did about twenty years ago, when I re-worked some of its insides. Accordingly, there was an accumulation of rather nasty-looking gunk around the bottom block.
Since the neck was knocked loose in the fall and needs to be reset, and since the top had to come off anyway, and moreover, I still have all the templates and clamping blocks I made for the instrument in the first place, I decided to remove and replace the top block, too, rather than shim the existing one before resetting the neck.
This presented an interesting challenge: the original label was glued to the top block. Preserve it? Sacrifice it?

The Equisetum update

5/6/2015

Minnesota winters are long. In my home country, it is not unusual for there to be crocus and daffodils in February. Here, however, the first greenish haze doesn't appear until late April. I imagine roots and bulbs nesting in the frozen ground, quietly gathering strength. Their time will come.
When spring does come, everything is ready for it. Listen to the rhubarb leaves crinkle as they unfurl in record time; watch the asparagus muscle its way forcefully out of the ground! I went sniffing around my pot of equisetum, full of hope and excitement, but for a long while it looked as though it might not have made it through the winter. I was all the more aggravated as my friend, who dug it up for me in the first place, told me his neighbour's yard was just about choked by the stuff.
Finally, though, here is some excitement in the form of a robust, multi-tiered green spear poking up into the sun. I will burnish locally, after all!

To sum up

3/17/2015

Maybe it hasn't been my most productive week ever. It's awfully hard to stay put at the workbench while outside, the first week of truly beautiful weather is unfolding, after five months of winter. Also, smashing one's instrument engenders a lot of running around later. Note to self: next time I set aside a chunk of time for purposes of making, avoid accidents at all cost.
There again, it wasn't my worst week, either. Due to the somewhat experimental character of the project, I felt at liberty to try out some methods of making new to me. One thing I'm doing differently is purfling with three separate strips of wood, rather than gluing three veneers together, then cutting them into 2mm-strips and bending, fitting and gluing them, which I have always done (and struggled with).

It will probably still turn out to be a very fiddly process, but there is a simplicity about the idea of this method that I find very appealing.

Progress Report: Days 5, 6 & 7

3/13/2015

In the beginning, there was ... ah. That's what I forgot: before I can forge ahead with work on the plates, I need some arching templates.
I picked some thin strips of mahogany out of the leftover bins in the machine room at school last week. They had weird cutout patterns in places, but I saw free template material, and nabbed them before anyone else could.
So, once the plates were flattened and the outlines traced and cut out, I set about the tedious task of making twelve arching templates. Yesterday the weather was almost unbearably nice -- at some point, I had enough of laboring and took myself to a nature preserve for a long walk, justifying it all the while with the indisputable fact that I needed to leave the house anyway, to pick up my cello from its independent damage assessment.
Today was just as beautiful, but I stayed put and put in long hours, getting the archings close and the front outline finished.

It's starting to look a lot like a violin, at which point the instrument starts to exert a certain gravitational pull on me -- I don't have to make myself, I want to work on it, to peel out the beautiful violin hidden in those formerly shapeless wedges. Sadly, spring break is almost over, and I have some grading and prep work yet to do.

Progress Report: Days 3 & 4

3/10/2015

With the weather at sixty-four balmy degrees and sunny, it was a struggle to remain in the workshop today. At this point, I have the ribs bent and one set of linings in. Both centre joints are glued, so tomorrow I can start work on the plates.
Since tomorrow is supposed to be another gorgeous day, I have a Skype class to teach to my Trinidadian students, and have an evening commitment, I am not sure how much uninterrupted bench time I will be able to fit in. My constant lament: there isn't enough time to do everything I want to do; life interferes with work on too regular a basis.