Arched Plate Carving, Part One: Establishing the Outside Surface

by Chris Burt

Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005

See also,
Measuring Archtop Musical Instruments by Chris Burt
Arched Plate Carving, Part Two by Chris Burt
Arched Plate Carving, Part Three by Chris Burt


This is the second of a series of articles that take you from the basics of creating your own database of instrument measurements to applying what you have learned from those measured instruments while you carve top and back plates. The first article of the series appeared in AL#83. In this article, you will learn how to carve top and back plates. The remainder of the series will describe plate graduating.

A classical guitar maker I know recently told me he began his career making carved-plate guitars, but his finished top and back plates always looked like folk art. Our conversation got me thinking about his experience and the causes of unwitting folk art. I don’t know the process he followed and so can’t comment on it, but I do remember a fiddle player who asked me for advice as he built a fiddle. His finished fiddle looked like folk art, the main reason being that he didn’t have a process. At least, he didn’t quite believe, or understand, the process he read about or the clarifications I advised. I remember telling him, more than once, that he’d not yet finished one step and so shouldn’t start the next. Inevitably, the next time I’d see his work, he’d let impatience push him into abandoning the incomplete step in favor of the illusion of progress provided by beginning a new step.