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Belly The belly of each instrument is fashioned from book-matched quarter-sawn spruce, which gives a very warm mellow sound. It is rigid and thin, so that it can vibrate, but as such is very fragile during the construction process. |
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| A shooting board is used to produce two perfectly straight edges for gluing together the book-matched halves of the back and front. | The two sides are glued up and afterwards sanded smooth ready for marking out. | A front is marked up after sanding, for cutting out to rough shape. Notice the holes drilled ready to cut the sound hole. |
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| The support struts that support the belly under pressure are glued on. The 2 longer ones are slightly curved, to create the lateral doming. |
Treble bars are glued on. The top can not vibrate in the same way on both sides, because the sound waves are different from the different strings. |
Final shaping of the bars is done with a chisel and block plane. The ends are tapered down, and the length will be shaved down to a whalebone shape. |