This is something I need to share.
Today I visited a 98 year old friend a violin maker for the past 75 years and he showed me his shop. He made his first violin from a piano spruce sounding board. He told me of his delight in coming into his shop each day first thing in the morning to see what he had done the day before. Every tool from planes the size of a thumbnail with wedges as large as the plane itself to to a signal generator/loudspeaker/phono pickup system that tested resonant frequency amplification at various points of the violin body -were invented and built by Joe.
Joe has made 103 violins. I thought this was pretty impressive as it took me a year to simply finish one from a kitset. I found out about him from a local newspaper article, it turned out a cousin of my wife’s knew him, so we were introduced a few months ago. Joe’s better violins haved been priced at $35,000 but I think this number may be low. He has all 103 violins beautifully stored in his house where he lives alone. I photographed as much as I could, there was a website that showed this room but the website eludes me now on google.
Anyway, while I am sad that Joe Rashid is tiring and confronted by the road ahead I am inspired by our mutual love of being in the workshop. Was it Jimmy Carter who says being in the shop was ‘like a vacation?
Joe calls once or twice a month. There is a note celotaped to his telephone that says ‘Gary fix-it guy’ ‘tv-guy’ and my my phone number.
This is a commentary about our love for woodworking, plus an exclamation mark to the inventiveness we each hold. Joe was a mechanical engineer who invented missile propulsion systems for the US. Today he showed me some of the actual missle release door mechanisms he invented. His designs were acknowleged by Fiedler the German engineer who bombed England who was later hired by U.S. Raytheon as being superior. I understand the US is using this design today.
While Joe is old and tired and often forgetful I wanted to take this space to acknowledge him.
To the old timers … we would not be here without them.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!” -Goethe
Replies
Thanks, Gary. I think this may be the web site you're talking about:
http://www.jour.unr.edu/goldbaum/studentWork/S05/draper/
Yes that is it thanks. Joe with help from others has started a foundation. His intention is to loan out the violins to people that need them. Apparently only one is on loan right now, he looks forward to many more going out.
http://josephrashid.org/index.htm"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" -Goethe
GARY,
Thanks for the inspiration, it's a fantastic story. It really helps while I work on taxes.
Joe, this brew's for you! Salute!
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Gary,
I had a look at his websites - absolutely incredible. What an art it is to build an instrument. Clearly one which he has mastered! You must feel very lucky (and proud) to know him.
Chris @ www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
- Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Yes proud and honored. Seeing the various tools he made opens my eyes to what is possible, that there are tools I could build myself that previously I might not have attempted. If there is such thing as an 'invention bug' I think I might have caught some of it.
When I finished my one and only violin I took it to Joe to see what he thought of it. It seems I was so nervous that when I went to tune it I tried to tune the D string to an A. The string quickly broke and that was the end of that! Picture of my little effort is attached. Oh Joe said it was very good.
I will ask Joe if I can post some pictures of his tools. Actually I should ask Joe if I can photograph all his tools."Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" -Goethe
Pic's now attached. The first is the white violin from internationalviolin.com after the first coat, a ground coat of gamboge. The second is complete with 15 coats of varnish. The DVD from internationalviolin.com on finishing a violin is poorly put together and difficult to follow, and the varnishing kit they provided does not match the DVD, but otherwise I am happy with the violin body and various parts that they kindly helped me to select."Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" -Goethe
Gary,
I can't comment on how it sounds, but it looks very good. Do you plan on building one without a kit? Maybe you could convince Joe to coach you through the process.Chris @ http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
- Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Gary , you are incredibly talented and show skills and discipline of many .
To the average wood worker carving the scroll would stop them in thier tracks .
dusty
Dusty, unfortunately the credit for the white-unfinished violin including the scroll goes to some outfit in Europe where internationalviolin.com get their violins from. There are all sorts of kits with different degrees of carving and completion. This was my first so I took it easy by starting with a pretty complete body, the only gluing needed was the fingerboard. The required effort was to sand a little to start plus between most coats, fine tune the f-holes and details in general with a fine blade, drill the end pin hole, ream the peg holes, shave the pegs and end pin, paint the scroll box and f-holes, cut and install the sound post, carve the bridge, and groove the nut at the top of the finger board. About 30-40 hours plus probably that much again in study. Apparently The Art of Violin Making by Johnson & Courtnall is one of the better books -it was certainly a big help for me. By the way the sound is pretty darn good as far as I can tell. Many many times better than an $850 rental unit I took lessons on for 6 months. For about $1000 in parts and tools I believe have a violin that would cost somewhere between $3000 & $5000. I haven't decided yet whether to make one from wood blanks, the most challenging part I think is the glue up. In glueing just the fingerboard I failed terribly in making usable hot hide glue from granules, but fortunately Titebond Liquid Hide Wood Glue worked really well.
Gary"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" -Goethe
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