I restore a WE Hill & Sons violin - day 1

hi guys so over the next few days I'm gonna share with you a restoration I'm doing on a w/e Hill violin at the moment it's from 1890 the father of the owner personally traveled from Australia to London to commission the instrument and buy it for her now the father was actually a prominent violinist in Queensland Australia at the time and was pardoned starting some of the orchestras and you know was a really important musical figure in the area in the late 18-hundreds now as I'm working on it I'll tell a little bit about the story firstly of the maker but then also the story of the violinist because it's a really interesting story the instrument hadn't been played for over 50 years but have been looked after pretty well so it's not a major restoration it had like some open spots that had a minor crack and then the rest is basically just maintenance that hasn't been done for many years so the violin is from w/e Hill but it was actually made by a French maker who work with w/e Hill his name was Charles Francois Langan I don't mind my pronunciation or not French but a super beautiful like a really beautiful instrument with a really lovely varnish that they used at the time also I'm very keen to find out how the instrument sounds like I said it was played by a prominent player like they play together in a quartet in the late 18-hundreds I've actually got a picture which I'm going to share of the family with instruments still working out if that is actually the instrument that I'm working on at the moment that's in the picture but it's going to be a yeah it'll be an interesting few days so keep an eye out for the videos I'll try and post one every few days and so the hulls they'll probably be about five different videos as I restore the instrument and then when it's finished I'm gonna play it and look at it and see what it sounds like okay how you going guys I just thought you might want to just watching as I'm doing a bit of work on this beautiful old William Hill & Sons filing from London 1890 it's it's really nice it's one of their really nice varnishes it's got that she and sieves just had a lot of dirt buildup everything's very dead the fingerboard needs planing you can kind of see that and then it's got just a little bit of a crack here on the F hole this one I'm gonna actually do from the outside which is not my preferred method but when it's something that's small I don't want to just open up a hole instrument and then you know with the chance of damaging things around the edges just for a tiny crack like that so I'll be able to do that one from the outside and then I can I've actually got a little trick on how I can put a reinforcement in from underneath yeah that that I use and then it'll be a bridge to some place this instrument has basically not been played for quite a long time so it's gonna be very exciting and getting it back into a playable condition and hearing it sounds for the first time so the first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to play in the fingerboard it's quite a dirty job and because the crew it generates a lot of dust from the yeah generates a lot of ebony bark dust and so it makes things really messy so I like to do it before I actually clean the instrument it just makes sense so one of the things I always do is I like to protect the instrument make sure it doesn't doesn't get any damage on the varnish while I'm working on it my favorite pastime looking for tools my workbench is pretty tidy isn't it so I've got my trusty knife I'm just gonna split off the the nuts at the top it's glued on with natural glue so you can split it off which is really great using my favorite plane Maile Neilson plane super sharp so it makes life's really easy one of the things I do is I make sure I use my template just to make sure the thing of board shape is right now this one's a little bit too pointy so it's like like pointy like this didn't do so I'm gonna make it and you can you should be able to see that well I can see it can you see this yeah you can kind of see it come to it it's a bit too pointed 20 yeah so it should be the same shape otherwise it's just not going to match up with the bridge curvature and then it means that the strings will be to place the fingerboard for the middle two strings and they'll probably be I'll end up probably making me if that was the case they'd probably be exactly right for the E and the G I've already had my second coffee for the for today so I'm full of energy and you can actually talk to me too which is always a good thing because you know what it's like then talk to me before I've had my coffee [Music] happy with a curvature of check through the curve a shot I am happy with it and I'm just going to just round off so so when I plane it there's like all these like little jagged edges and just on the end of the fingerboard here like these jagged for some reason it's always a bit more jagged on the edge and the next steps gonna be sanding and usually when I sand but it just wouldn't wear off if I didn't do that this filing gonna use different grades of sandpaper I'm gonna start off with the roughest great either hundred and twenty grade or eighty grade if it's if the finger boards a lot so everything the board's different so the timber quality of every ebony fingerboard is quite different you can have some really high quality evany with very straight growth or you can have some that's like quite not has lots of knots and things like that and just growing like that and the timber that has a lot of knots will end up being very hard to ply in because it's easy to play in timber when that when the grain is straight but say and even if the grain grows this way it's easy to plane because you're cutting with the direction of the grain but if the grain is this way and you're cutting it actually really rips the don't worry I'm not gonna hurt my fingers and it really rips the grain out and you can start getting these these really rough patches this fingerboard annie has one very tiny bit of a knot just up the top here but that didn't really tear out too much now if you do this often enough you will probably ask um wouldn't the fingerboard be gone after a while and that's exactly right so a fingerboard can last depends how how much a player plays and what kind of so each player has different type of perspiration so everyone sweats differently and and and the timbers are differently so something aborts can look really bad when you start and others only have very faint dents different players have a different effect on the cleaner board so some players might need their fingerboard planed every six months whereas other players might not need their fingerboard planed for two to three years and that's even for professional players but having a smooth fingerboard is really important for a clear sound so if you think of orders and smooth it'll take away from the clarity of the sound so I can make their sound the instrument sound just a little bit fuzzy okay 120 grade sandpaper hundred and 80 graves and I'm gonna keep using finer grades until we into the fingerboard is beautifully planed okay then the second finest grade of sandpaper with oil and it's a dusty okay so Neath my fine sandpaper here well and it's gonna make it look amazing take a look how beautiful that looks but makes a big difference doesn't it okay the next steps gonna be actually cleaning the whole instrument of the maillard dirty work now time to get on to thee by cleaning the instrument part this this has got an incredible it's the the rosin he has literally baked into the instrument it's gonna be a bit of a tricky one don't try this at home and like some of these instruments have really valuable varnish and if you don't get this right they're actually some varnishes that will literally dissolve and but then water but this one won't but it's still you know that you've got to get a just right to make sure that you don't do any damage you don't ever want to get any water into the inside of the instrument this is gonna take a while so I'm not probably not gonna keep rolling through the whole process well so what's your hands when you're playing your instrument it will make sure that it gets less dirty especially just hear they wash their hands okay I've done quite a bit of cleaning on this but there needs to be more cleaning especially just up around here so badly built up so I'm gonna it's gonna be a bit of a process and I'll need to use different I'll need to use different solvents to just very carefully just get rid of that top layer of rosin so it's gonna be a bit of a tricky one but I'm just gonna be just about to head out to lunch so I'm just gonna glue glue the saddle back on and I also found person open spot here I'll probably deal with that at the same time is gluing this crack so I'll just hang this up here to dry look out for the next video in this serious so I'm this is gonna be a step-by-step process and you will see the instrument fully finished and restored and also I'll play the violin at the end now don't expect a solo well it is a solo but don't expect you know soloist kind of a version like I'm in a cape lair but I'm better at violin making than I am at playing violin so this was day one so press subscribe and press a little Bell button down the bottom that way you'll find out when the next video is up [Music]

Channel: Ask Olaf the Violinmaker

Views: 27,646

Rating: 4.9847426 out of 5

Keywords: violin maker, violin maker documentary, olaf violin, twosetviolin olaf, violin repair, violin bridge, violin restoration, the violin studio, ask olaf the violin maker, olaf the violin maker, twoset olaf, interesting vioiln video, interesting violin

Id: jR3mRyVyCTk

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020