Traditional Lutherie Techniques for Violin and Guitar Making

by Charles Rufino and Stephen Marchione

from their 2014 GAL Convention workshop

Originally published in American Lutherie #127, 2016



Charles: Necks are where the musician interacts with the instrument, and they have to be absolutely right. A musician brought me a cello with a neck so warped that the high action rendered the instrument unplayable. They had taken it to a well-respected shop in New York. They said, “We just had it fixed, and it’s acting up again.” So I took the fingerboard off and planed the neck, which had a very convex shape. When I applied glue, something told me to check it with a straightedge, and the convex shape was back. Improvising, I grabbed a very flat reference board, just a 2˝×4˝ that I keep planed up very flat, put a couple of pieces of paper in the center of the length to force it into a concave shape, and clamped it up. Later I observed the grain of the neck was straight until 3˝ from the bottom end, where 5MM down from the gluing surface it shot up at a 45° angle. It changed direction remarkably.

The next day I realized that this process of sizing the neck and holding it until it took a proper shape might be a simple solution. When I glued it again, I found that it held its shape. The customer was in again a year later, and the neck was still fine. That made perfect sense because hide glue is mostly water, and as it penetrates, the wood reacts and changes shape. By sizing and drying the neck in a controlled shape, I can get it to hold that shape after the sizing glue dries. Later the glue for assembling the joint will penetrate only until it hits that sizing; the shape will not change in gluing, and it’s very stable. I now do this to all my instruments and prefer it to using carbon-fiber rods, which I think make a neck too strong.