365 Days of Dan: Day 24

I recently purchased a new gluepot for the home shop. It is a cute little number designed by Hank Levin and sold by Luthier's Mercantile. Since I make glue in tiny amounts in the shop, this small, self-contained unit seemed appropriate. It is nice to work with and looks at home on the bench, and the only modification I made was to add some insulation to the lid because the knob cast into the cover gets hot to the touch.

Looking at a gluepot reminds me of a story from my London days. I was friends with one of the Charles Beare repair shop workers for a short while. At that time, they were the premier repair shop in London, and Charles’ expertise brought in some of the finest violins ever made to be repaired, restored, and adjusted.

Apparently, in the shop was a gentleman from Germany who had a fondness for a sausage lunch. As is a typical German custom, he preferred his brats boiled, so to utilize the resources at hand, he would cook the mid-day meal in the gluepot.

I don't know if this story is apocryphal, lore, or if she punked me, but I always hope he changed the water before regluing the seam on that Strad.

365 Days of Dan: Day 23

I do not sleep well these days due to some steroids the doctors gave to me attempting to restart my bone marrow. The therapy was unsuccessful and served only to cut my sleep cycle by five hours. Consequently, these days I arise long before the sun and go to the workshop for an opportunity to use the dark to reconnect to some old practices.

In my early years, my only thickness tools for measuring plates were a four-inch lathe caliper and my hands. Partly because I liked the challenge of touch-thicknessing, but mostly because I could not afford a professional measuring device, I relied mostly on my hands to judge the thickness of plates. It was only recently that I purchased a dial caliper.

I use one light behind me at the back of the room, which provides just enough illumination over my shoulder to make out the lay of the plate I am working on. I feel the pockets and contours of the inside of the plate and test the thickness flow until I know the plate thoroughly. Then I use a plane on a delicate setting to start removing wood. In the quiet of the darkness, I can hear the pitch change as the blade moves through the wood from one thickness to another. The thinner wings make a low, loose sound, while the thicker center at the joint is higher and tight. Stainer was crafty. His pronounced arches make following the outside contours in the dark, especially in the Cs, tricky. The support ridge down the center of the plate is prominent in the gloom, and I smooth it into the medium thickness of the middle wings.

As the sun rises, the low light from the horizon rakes across the plate, revealing the divots from the plane blade and the shape of the contours. I use the calipers to check my work, acknowledging that my fingers are not as sensitive as times past, and I am glad that I am conservative with the plane.

Winter Newsletter 2023

Greetings From the Gamut Music Workshop—

It has been a dynamic winter here in northern Minnesota, but with the addition of a newly hired string polisher, the shop is running smoothly and is in the process of restocking a variety of instrument strings. The weather across the country that played havoc with package carriers has abated somewhat and shipping times seem to have returned to normal, which is a great blessing.

The quiet months up in the Great North are a great opportunity to stay warm and catch up on projects in the instrument workshop and string workshop in anticipation for our Spring Sale in March, and that is what we intend to do.

In addition, I have started to Instagram 365 Days of Dan — posts concerning the events of my life and that of Gamut Music. Each day I post a little something about my education at the London College of Furniture, my instrument design philosophy, musings on the string workshop and string making, and other related tidbits. I hope you will check the posts out and enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

We hope this newsletter finds you well this winter, and we look forward to continued business with you.

All the best to you and yours,

Dan Larson and the Gamut Music workshop

365 Days of Dan: Day 22

Looking back through the picture archives, I am surprised at how many guitars I have made over the years. There are always unfinished guitars and parts around the workshop in the background, if not the foreground. Oddly, I never think of myself as a guitar maker. When someone asks me what instruments I make, I always say, "violins and lutes." If they press me, I may eventually say, "well, I also make some Baroque guitars and vihuelas," but that starts a whole explanation about what a Baroque guitar is, how it differs from a classical guitar, and what the heck a vihuela may be.

The fact is that I have made a lot of guitars, yet I feel like something other than a guitar maker. Interesting.

365 Days of Dan: Day 21

I made my first violin in 1972, and after eight months of carving and scraping, I was ready to take on the ultimate violin-makers task: fitting the bass bar. At that time, I felt that nothing was beyond me. Fitting one piece of wood to another, how hard could that be; bring it on, I said.

Then the day came when she felt that the inside of the front was smooth and even enough to receive the bar, and I carefully matched the grain and formed the smoothest, straightest bar of which I was capable. Pat showed me how to place the bar on the inside of the front, trace a rough line on the bar showing the general shape it should be, and brace the bass bar against the edge of the workbench to begin removing the wood carefully. The only tool for this task was a knife, which could be used both as a cutter and scraper. Then, I began to cut. And scrape. And cut. And scrape. And cut some more, and scrape some more. I spent all the school day and evenings working on the bar, probably fourteen hours a day. At some point during the second week, I dreamt that I was a bass bar trying to settle into the front and form myself to the curves of the wood. In the dream, I allowed myself to relax and let the wood tell me what shape I should be to fit correctly. Eventually, I found a comfortable position and knew I was appropriately shaped with just a little spring for tension.

By the end of the second week, I had the bar fitting tightly against the front with a small modicum of spring, and I proudly brought the work to Pat for her approval. She looked it over, flexing it and fitting it, and then she got the clamps out and clamped it into place, and it fit perfectly. I felt like I had passed a great test as she unclamped it and said, "Yes, Daniel (she always called me Daniel), very nice." Then she put one hand on each bar end, brought her knee up, and broke it in two. "Now, make another one."

And now, whenever I fit a bass bar, I imagine myself as the bar, settling into place and getting comfortable. An hour later, with it glued in place, I smile, feeling I have had a nice nap.

365 Days of Dan: Day 20

Here is an image of Dan in the basement workshop on 28th Ave. E. putting the polish on a medieval lute. This space was also the string-making workshop for a few years while I developed the process. The sink where I split and scraped is over my right shoulder, and the string bench is over my right shoulder against the wall. One of the twisting machines is on the bench top in the corner. Looking at the picture now, it all seems so rudimentary, hardly more than one would have seen in a 16th-century workshop. I spent years in this workshop developing the process of making strings, and it demonstrates that you can have a little to do a lot.

365 Days of Dan: Day 19

A group shot. I have mentioned Glen Bjorkman several times concerning string-making because he was instrumental in helping me get the process going. He is the one that gave me the method used by the Armor for sheep gut. His company, Victor Surgical Gut, specialized in beef gut production, a slightly different process. In this group, Glen is on the far left. Next to him is Jody Anderson, who did a three-year apprenticeship with me and became quite a luthier in her own right. Next to Jody is Bobbye, my much better half, and on the right is a rare picture of Dan without a beard. We are standing in front of the house on 28th Ave. E. in Duluth where the business started.

365 Days of Dan: Day 18

Cleaning the material is the first and essential job of making gut strings. Cleaning is accomplished with a scraper like the one in this picture. This tool came to me from the Armor Company through Glen Bjorkman, and we still use it in the workshop today; it has been scraping the gut for about one hundred years. The scraping surface is a piece of black plastic. This dark background clearly shows the fat particles in the gut that show bright white. These can then be scraped from the gut or sometimes even cut from it. The fat interferes with the bonding of the collagen as the gut dries, so its removal is most important, and this is a crucial step in making good strings.

365 Days of Dan: Day 17

At the beginning of gut strings, making them was pretty simple. There were few descriptions of string construction until the 16th century. Still, from the available data, especially the number of gut strands that went into making 'oud strings, according to Al Kindi, it is clear they have used what became known in later years as "whole gut" production, which is a process where the cleaned intestine is twisted as it comes from the animal.

The anatomy of the intestine is that of a curve, where one side of the tube is longer than the other. So, the shorter inside becomes tight with the whole tube stretched straight before, the longer outside curve. With whole gut production, it is impossible to align the fibers in the gut properly, and the strings made thusly tend to be weak and false.

Sometime in the 16th century, someone came up with a technology to solve this problem. I don't know where it happened, but I suspect the innovation occurred somewhere in the Saxony region, perhaps in Markneukirchen or Munich. The solution was to split the gut lengthwise to create two ribbons that could be stretched and aligned in a more rational structure, thereby making a stronger string.

The image presented is of our first gut splitter that I received from Glen Bjorkman of the Victor Surgical Gut Co. His family purchased the gut string-making business from the Armor Company in Chicago, IL, and this splitter was used in the Armor factory. It is a simple device that uses an old-fashioned double-sided razor blade to split the gut lengthwise. It is a hazardous device, and I can't say how many cuts we received from those blades. Even though we used warm water during the process, our hands would still get cold, and sometimes we would not realize a cut until we saw blood in the water. Still, it got us started with making strings, and it seemed like a reasonable risk at the time.

365 Days of Dan: Day 16

I made some scrapers today and thought of Robert Meadow. I have received a lot of advice and tips from other makers over the years, but Robert is one of the few who gave me an idea that changed my working life.

I met Robert at one of the first Boston Early Music Exhibitions. He displayed lutes and Japanese tools, and some scrapers made from Japanese saw steel were among the offerings. Interesting, but what caught my eye was the sharpened edge. It was a single bevel, razor-fine, and honed over to form the scraping curl. He explained how such a configuration was easy and quick to renew, especially with good steel, with satisfying results. It was a revelation to me.

I had struggled with scrapers for years. I initially adopted the traditional Western method of squaring the scraper edge and honing both sides over to form two curls like a cabinet scraper. It was a working system but laborious to maintain. In the supper of 1974, I made the pilgrimage to Cremona to see the artifacts from the Stradivari workshop and saw that he sharpened his scrapers on both sides like a knife edge. The blades were so old and worn that I could not judge if there were a curl on the edge, but I think not. He just brought the edge sharp from both sides. I tried that system for a while and could never get it to work satisfactorily, so I returned to the old cabinet scraper system. That is until I met Robert, and he showed me a better way that I have been using ever since.

So, I made scrapers today, and I thought of Robert, and I thought of Antonio, and I thought of a day long ago when I sat and sipped an expresso in a cafe in Cremona.

365 Days of Dan: Day 15

In 1973 the British Home Office regulations concerning student visas excluded holders of that status from working in the UK. However, the rules did not extend to the spouses of students. Within this regulation, my wife (at the time), with her secretarial skills, became the assistant to Philip Shirtcliff at the London College of Furniture.

Also, in the autumn of 1973, the ethnomusicologist Jean Jenkins began lectures at the school. Jean became familiar with my wife and was also in need of some secretarial assistance. She had entered into negotiations with Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, for an opportunity to study music in the country, which required his permission. This correspondence proved long and arduous, and Jean wanted a typist at her call. She proposed a swap: on-call secretarial work for free rent in her country house. And that was how I came to live in a 16th C. house called The White Cottage, Near Saffron Waldon.

Jean proved difficult and demanding, and evenings working with her ended in tears. Even though her professional charm was apparent, anger always lay coiled and ready to strike. In between the tongue lashings, we heard stories of how she was given a herd of camels in the Middle East and sang her traditional American songs for twenty-four hours during a week-long celebration. She was always in control and command.

As my time in school ended in 1974, I heard of an African university that needed a musical instrument technician. Young and naturally enthusiastic about foreign things, this seemed an excellent opportunity to study indigenous lutherie, and I planned to apply for the job.

I felt confident about the plan since I know one of the great ethnomusicologists who could give me a reference. When I asked Jean for the favor, in typical Jean fashion, she looked down her glasses at me and said, "I could give you a reference, and you would get the job. However, I am not going to do that. You chose to make violins, and that is what you should do." And that ended my dream of developing the field of ethnolutherie.

365 Days of Dan: Day 14

The image for today is of me working on the ribs for my first violin. It was taken in my bedsit flat at 5 Tredegar Terrace in the Mile End section of East London. The house was divided into three flats. There was only one toilet around at the back of the house, and the plumbing was minimal. Bathing was done at the public baths around on Mile End Road. The rent was £5 per week, paid in cash on Friday to the landlord, who came by personally to collect.

At the LCF, we were not taught how to use a mold to form ribs, but rather, a construction method where the ribs were built onto a plywood board. The board was first flattened with a hand plane, and the rib and plate outlines were drawn onto the board. Then, the blocks were glued on in their respective places. Blocks were significant at the school. In fact, the first task we were given was to make a perfect cube using only a saw, file, and square. The preferred material was willow cut from old cricket bats, many of which were in the workshop. That willow was extraordinary, tightly grained with a creamy texture that would cut in any direction. Wood like that is truly no longer available. The blocks were shaped with gouges for the corners and chisels for the upper and lower blocks. The trick was to remove the excess wood without cutting into the board, which would remove the pencil rib line. Keeping the faces smooth and square was challenging. This method did not call for the C linings to be inset into the corner blocks; instead, they simply abutted the block. It is a silly method for rib construction, and I don't know where it came from or how widely it was used in the English tradition. The only advantage I found was that it had a built-in failsafe for obtaining a flat surface. It was only possible to get the ribs flat against the board if all block surfaces were perfectly square and the rib edges perfectly straight. Providing, of course, you got the board perfectly flat at the start.

365 Days of Dan: Day 13

During my reminiscences this year, I will mention the London College of Furniture several times. This school has existed in some form since the late 1800s, and in the early 1960s, William Luff started teaching evening classes in violin making and repair. By 1970 the school had moved into a new facility on Commercial Street in London's East End and expanded its courses into a three-year certificate program. William Shirtcliff was the director of the Musical Instrument Program, and William Luff passed the violin teaching position on to his start student, Patricia Naismith. She taught both the daily certificate classes during the day and the part-time evening classes. The criteria for student acceptance for courses was quite selective and included a personal interview.

However, in 1971 the Authority decided that the new school needed students; lots of students to fill the new facility. So, entrance criteria were canceled for people applying to the school for the 1972 entrance, including the personal interview, and all applying students were accepted. That is how a young Danny Larson from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, received a chance to go to London and study violin making.

The tuition for the first year was £50. At the beginning of my second year, Mr. Shirtcliff's assistant pulled me aside. She said there had been a clerical error and that I should not have paid any tuition for the previous year because I had been eighteen years old when I entered the course. She laid five crisp ten-pound notes in my hand, and I had food for months.

The picture is the entrance of the London College of Furniture in 1972. The violin workshop is the room on the third floor with the lights on. The lights were always on.

365 Days of Dan: Day 12

When I was at the London College of Furniture in 1973, Chris Challen came to teach and start a lute-making course. I am uncertain of his experience up to that time, but I had the impression that he was still working out the details of lute construction. At that time, there was no culture of the craft outside of the German coterie, and that was based mainly on the violin- and guitar-making traditions. For those of us trying to reconstruct a more historical form of instrument, we had to figure out many techniques by trial and error.

When it came to gluing the bridge onto the front in those early days, I would first assemble the instrument altogether. My concern was that the strings aligned with the neck properly, so there was a balanced distance between the first string and the fingerboard edge with a corresponding spacing for the last fundamental string. The only way I could imagine being confident of that alignment was to complete the construction sans bridge and then glue that in place the last thing when I could be satisfied with its relationship to the fingerboard. For pressure, I used weights set on a board riding over the bridge top. I regret that this system resulted in an occasional bridge coming unglued with dramatic consequences.

Since those days, I have refined my bridge-placement methods. I now glue the bridge onto the front before that gets put on the bowl. The clamps provide more pressure than I could ever achieve with weights, and I am glad to say that bridges no longer come off unexpectedly.

365 Days of Dan: Day 11

Today is a perfect day in the workshop. We have a new batch of sheep gut that is of outstanding quality and will help us to get caught up in sheep production.

Additionally to that good news, we have completed development on a project we have been working on for about two years. As most Gamut customers know, we offer to tie knots into the ends of strings, which is necessary to hold them onto the tailpiece. Last year we tied thousands of knots, which was pretty tiring on our hands. A couple of years ago, we began to develop another solution for a stopper. The research and development led us to some exciting technology, and finally, Jake developed the perfect model and found the ideal materials to make the stoppers here in the workshop. That will allow us to control the quality and sourcing of the pieces so we will stay supplied. We will be announcing the new ball ends later this month, but I got so excited when Jake showed me the finished product this morning that I just had to share the news immediately. We have a successful design, and once production ramps up, the workshop folk can go home at the end of the day without sore fingers.

365 Days of Dan: Day 10

There was quite a response to the vihuela front I posted yesterday, so there might be an interest to see the finished project. The model is based on the instrument in the Cité de la Musique, inventory number E.7048. It is a fascinating example from several points of view. First, it is one of the few instruments from the 15th century in primarily original condition. The original is what we might characterize as a "working instrument" in that it is not constructed from expensive materials and has no decorations. The workmanship is clean and accurate but not exemplary, meticulous craftsmanship. But the most interesting aspect is the construction of the back. Since the design is quite broad, especially in the lower bouts, the back assembly was a critical consideration in the instrument's success. If a flat back had been chosen, it would have required thick wood or numerous struts. Either decision would have added considerable weight to the construction resulting in an unresponsive instrument. A vaulted back would have been tricky because of the width difference between the upper and lower bouts with the accentuated waist. The solution of the seven volutes was brilliant. The curve of the volutes allows the wood to be very thin and light while maintaining considerable strength due to the shape. The result is nothing less than brilliant.

365 Days of Dan: Day 9

I spent the day training our new string polisher. My goodness, but there is a lot to know about strings! After so many years, I have to remind myself how many details there are in making a simple string. No, let me rephrase that; since there is no simple string. I need to remember how many decisions are necessary to make a string. What instrument is it going on? What is the string position? A violin e-1 string needs to be hard and resilient, the a-2 requires more twist and a softer feel, and a d-3 string needs to have quite a tight twist and a very soft feel. What is the finished gauge? What diameter of rough string do you start with for that gauge? If you choose too large, then too much gut has to be polished off, and the string could be weak, not thick enough, and the string will not be smooth. It goes on and on. For each string, there are a dozen questions, answers, and judgments are asked, answered, and made. So, I spent my day trying to convey some of these concepts to the new guy.

The image for today is of a vihuela I finished recently. I was allowed to have fun with the decorations, so I went crazy with mother of pearl and abalone.

365 Days of Dan: Day 8

Sundays are for carving lute roses.

365 Days of Dan: Day 7

There was a time when only a few trading companies carefully controlled the violin-making business. These companies regulated the flow of parts, tools, strings, and even designs to shops and individuals utterly dependent upon these intermediate wholesale trade organizations. Most of the wood, tools, and other paraphernalia for the violin trade originated or at least flowed through Germany and had done so since the prominence of Fussen over the European lute trade starting in the early 16th century. This reliance on the Germanic cadre had difficulties. I remember going into a prominent violin supply shop in London for some cello pegs only to find that none were available because the German gentleman who made them had been ill.

I recently desired a new purfling marker and found numerous available models. The availability of specialty items is truly remarkable these days. I ended up with a little brass number, probably made in China but readily available from Amazon with Prime delivery. I wanted something with solidity and heft, and this tool feels substantial yet controllable in the hand. I spent several hours this afternoon sharpening and setting the blades, and you can see from the picture that by the fourth test trench, I had the settings as I liked. The sides of the channel are tight against the purfling without squeezing it, and the edge lines are well-defined.

365 Days of Dan: Day 6

Today has been the most practical sort of day, spent sorting and organizing gut. The bane of the workshop is the clean-up. I realize that no one likes to clean, but cleaning is especially problematic in a production workshop where the emphasis is on, well, production. This is a particular problem around the polishing machines. Numerous issues can arise when polishing a string. It is not uncommon for the stones to hit a rough spot and cut the string, or, which is very common, the string does not polish completely smooth, and needs to be set aside in favor of another, more promising-looking rough string. The result is that strings of odd gauges and lengths pile up on the bench and need to be dealt with occasionally, and today was one of those days. We have a new worker starting on Monday, and I want him to begin with a clean bench. So, as Boss of Gamut Music, it is my task to clean up after the last worker to create an unspoiled environment for the new one. Every new worker deserves a clean slate.