The tools of the trade in lutherie have changed little over the last four hundred years.  Were a seventeenth-century maker transported into a modern maker’s workshop, there would be much he would recognize and much that would amaze him.

Handplanes, benches, chisels, dividers, gouges, and knives are the unchanging tools that enable craftsmen to make stringed instruments.  While electricity has enabled us to work more independently and accomplish some rough tasks with greater ease, it is these basic tools and the way each maker uses them that imprints each instrument with its personality.  The shape and width of a gouge used for carving the volute of the scroll has a direct impact on the depth and shape of the cuts.  The number and spacing of teeth on a plane blade leave telltale marks on the  ribs.   The tools, therefore, shape the making and make important contributions to the final form of the instrument.

Some makers work quickly, some slowly.   Some spend great amount of care erasing every trace of tool marks.  Others seem to be already turning their attention to the next instrument.   I personally enjoy seeing some evidence of the tool work on a new instrument.  I feel in a world so full of perfect, machined, plastic things, it is this humanity and personality in workmanship that gives the best violins of all ages a depth of beauty and interest.

Here is an image gallery of some of the tools you will see scattered around the benches of my shop: