Birds

Perched about the workshop are a number of birds, the latest arrivals being some owls. Alf-Inge (also a violinmaker) has been a bird watcher for many years, and when he can't get out in the countryside to spy on them with his binoculars then he has to make do with carving and painting them - rather beautifully as you can see. There is a little mixed flock of them up in the shop at the castle for sale. The picture above shows two unpainted "juveniles" and the final adult result is displayed below together with a Norwegian hardingfele (hardangar violin) built by Alf-Inge's father.

Kora

I'm going to build a Kora (a lute/harp from west Africa with about 22 strings). It's going to be a very challenging project since it is so exotic in these parts but I'm just going to go ahead and try and learn as much as I can in process.

A calabash with my name on it. At least my initial, which I take to be a very good sign, although it won't be visible once I've fastened the skin on it.

Skins from Senegal. I got an extra one so that I can make a little drum too, one day.

What I've been working on today: a graph of string length against pitch, so that I can plan how to build the neck.
If you watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEPm04v9Mk&feature=related you might understand why I want to do this.

A visit to the National Swedish Handicraft Council

Upstairs in our house is the West Götaland Regional Office of the National Swedish Handicraft Council, which is a fancy name for bunch of very lovely people who help out with all manner of exciting handwork projects. Their offices are filled with colourful creations and it is very inspiring to go up there. For some reason that doesn't happen too often for me but today I needed a little advice on my next project. They showed me a Sami drum made from a reindeer skin and a tool used for preparing the hide. http://www.hemslojd.se/

A Case for the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency

Apologies to Mr MacCall Smith. This story has actually got nothing at all to do with the no.1 Ladies Detective agency, I just liked the sound of the title. It is however set in Botswana, it is about a case - a large wooden, home made, black painted double bass case christened "the Sarcophogus" and well, who knows, there may even be the odd corpse lurking about somewhere too.

I'd been learning the bass for about a year or so when Corrado the conductor of the Sinfonietta, the youth orchestra in Harare, announced that he'd been invited to be a guest conductor at a music camp in Gaberone and wondered if any of us might like to tag along for company especially since there weren't many string players in Botswana. Not being one to let such an adventure pass me by I volunteered and set about organising how to transport my grandfather's bass on the train to Gaberone. Since it would have to go in the luggage wagon this involved borrowing the "Sarcophogus" from Mr Baldock, my dear old bass teacher.

This went more or less smoothly and soon Corrado, myself and another adventurer called Philip were relaxing at Phil the cello player's mother's house in Bulawayo, waiting for the train to Gaberone which was due to leave at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We were told that there was no hurry, and it was probably a good idea to ring the station before leaving the house, which we did several times and each time were told to stay put as the train was by no means ready to leave yet. After the umpteenth round of afternoon tea, our stomachs going glug glug, the sun low in the sky, we called the station one last time and the man at the other end said exasperatedly but good naturedly "Don't worry, it's not a problem, if the train leaves today it will be on time, and yes, you can come and wait at the station now if you like!"

Eventually we had ourselves and instruments installed on the train. I remember that I was wearing a white denim skirt with thin black pinstripes. It was an 80s relic, picked out by mum from the factory reject shop in Msasa, but I was quite fond of it. It went nicely together with my growing out perm. Later on I would buy my own clothes from the Danish Aid charity shop on South Avenue or Mapedzanhamo clothes market at Mbare, or I'd buy material from one of the 3 adjacent haberdasheries at Stortford Parade and have clothes made up by the tailors in town. But at this stage I was still relying on my mum and the factory rejects from Msasa. This is etched in my memory because when I got on the train the skirt was white and when we got out in Gabarone it was dark grey. Ever since then I have regarded with deep suspicion people who wax lyrical about the romanticism of travelling by steam train. It took several hours of scrubbing in Mr Slater's bath tub that morning to rid our pores and orifices of quantities of black soot and my skirt was never quite the same after that.

The camp was fun. The highlight was singing this west African song about Sango, the Yoruba god of lightning, taught to us by the visiting African American conductor. Sango quickly became everyone's prefered greeting word. There didn't end up being a great amoungt of string playing but Corrado had a wonderful sense of humour and we seemed to spend most of the week collapsed in fits of hysterics, at least to my memory. One is only 15 once, after all. We also did some compulsary shopping because the shops in Botswana were full of luxurious imported South African products and at that stage Zimbabwe was still on the road to socialism and had a very limited choice available. After hours of goggling and indecision I bought a tray of tinned tuna for my mother and a very advanced gadget that you could put at the end of a hose pipe to regulate the water flow for my dad, who was an avid gardener and had only ever used the thumb method of water regulation. It was soon time to pack the bass back into the sarcophogus and the tinned tuna and garden gadget and make our way to the station.

At this point a digresion is necessary. Sometime during this era my mum's car, a new, second hand yellow Datsun Bluebird was stolen, not an unusual event in itself, but it had been parked right outside the High Court, "can you *** believe it?!" she regailed endlessly to all and sundry. You remember what that was like being 15 and having to hear your mother say anything more than once? Anyway, after some time she got a phone call from a jocular police sergeant who was most pleased to tell her that not only had they found her car but they'd caught 2 notorious car thieves too. What he meant by this was that the car had driven through a police road block on the Mutare road and as it refused to stop, the police had emptied several rounds of bullets into it, killing one of the thieves and injuring the driver. A hectic but ultimately short and fruitless car chase ensued in second gear. The car was left in quite a state as you can imagine, with blood and broken glass and a burnt out gear box. And no one would have anything to do with it. They wouldn't touch it. We couldn't even get it towed. This being due to what is surely one of Sekuru Mujuru's hundred golden rules: "Avoid having anything to do with anything that may have had a dead body inside it." Perfectly sane advice one would think but white people for some reason just don't always get it.

Anyhow, before long the people at the towing company and the garage had succumbed to my mum's superior persuasive abilities and the car was back on the road, my mum happily zooting around the streets of Harare again, proudly showing off the bullet holes in the dashboard to anyone who had the stomach to look. Which takes us back to the platform at Gaberone station. A problem. The station manager refused point blank to even let us take the Sarcophogus through the gate. No amount of arguing that all that was inside was a big guitar had any effect. It looked like a coffin and it could have at one point had a dead body inside therefore under no circumstances would it be allowed onto the train. End of discussion.

Oh well, luckily Mr Slater was planning to drive to Bulawayo in a couple of weeks and he kindly agreed to take it in the back of his truck and I was eventually reunited with my bass and we lived more or less happily every after. And so now, 20 years later, at bass nerd gatherings, when the conversation inevitably turns to the difficulties of travelling with a bass, I listen and smile to myself and remember my African Adventures with the Sarcophogus and the big guitar.

Nice work if you can get it

Retouching varnish is sometimes one of my favorite jobs. On good days it can be very satisfying and I might be listening to something like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vem1ZKnStU On bad days it is just frustrating and I'll be saying "oh please, won't you tell me how?"

My palette has amber, red, green and black colours which are mixed into a bit of spirit varnish - it's the closest I'll ever come to being an artist. I test the colour on my thumbnail and add more alcohol regularly with a pipette. Two things that I keep in mind are to aim for a slightly lighter colour than the surrounds and not to underestimate the amount of green necessary. A darker patch immediately draws the eye for some reason and a lot of bad retouch work has way too much red in it. I suppose because the idea of a red brown varnish is nicer than the idea of green brown, but maybe it's just because of colourblindness. Some people use blue but green is better because it is one of the primary colours of light and varnish has a lot to do with light. That's what makes it difficult. You're dealing not only with colour but refraction and reflection. Sometimes the retouched area will be the right colour if you look at it from one angle and completely wrong from another. Sometimes it ends up too shining. Sometimes it just disappears, like magic.

What is satisfying about retouching work is the variety of different approaches you can take, from how you prepare the wood underneath to how you mix the varnish, to aging the new varnish, blending it with the old. And you can get it, if you try.There are so many different colours and textures and depths and each instrument is unique. It's not about perfection either because the signs of age and weathering, the patina, the imperfections just enhance the character and beauty of an instrument. Being able to spend hours concentrating on little tiny details, your mind free to wander, and then when it's all done being able to step back and suddenly all those little eye catching wounds have become invisible and the underlying beauty of the instrument comes to the fore - that is nice work.

Changing strings

This is something that players usually do themselves, which is good, because it's not one of my favourite jobs. Unfortunately I'm often confronted with some odd spaghetti tangles and end up having to redo it anyway. So here's a quick tutorial:

There are several different methods, but this one is easy. It may look a bit odd with the long tails, but these can be trimmed with a pair of wire cutters if desired. They are however useful as when you want to remove the string, all you need to do is loosen the tension and then thread the tail back through the hole and you've saved yourself an awful lot of winding. To put on a new string thread it through the hole leaving a longer tail for a shorter mensure (vibrating string length) and a thinner cone. Wind once around the inside and then aim for 2 to 4 windings on the outside, depending on the thickness of the string and the distance of the hole to the peg box wall - as you can see in the picture. Hold the string taut with one hand while winding with the other. This makes the windings much neater and gives you a better idea of how much tail to leave. It's good when there are enough windings for the string to lie snugly against the wall of the peg box.

• Avoid letting the windings cross over each other.
• Avoid taking off all the strings at once as the bridge and maybe also sound post will come loose.
• Change the outer 2 strings first followed by the inner strings, it's easier that way and the tension is more even on the instrument.
• Keep an eye at all times on the bridge. It has a tendency to lean up towards the fingerboard as the strings are being tightened. Just press it back into place if this happens.
• It can also be a good idea to lubricate the string grooves at the bridge and saddle with an ordinary graphite pencil.

If you have a string that you can see is a bit short just thread the string through the hole, wind once and then thread the end of the string over the winding, back through the hole and carry on tuning up.

Work space

The Strad magazine did a series of articles about different luthiers' workshops, with pictures and descriptions. Here's mine: tools on the left wall; stove for glue; ebony files on the left; wood files on the right, a couple of violins I made at school hanging up there; two pieces of paper that I decided to frame; a cupboard we made during our first year.

In the window: some pottery from Marge Wallace, ceramic artist in Harare; an old violin top that I replaced on an instrument and then put in the window for display; a special candle holder from my artist friend Helen Molin; a 1/2 size violin I started years ago and just recently finished the scroll to; a special pottery container made by Emil; bits and bobs basket from the side on the road in Zim; a double bass bridge of mine (made of maple - hence the leaf); the shelves and drawers I made very simply to keep things tidy, they are of full of varnish stuff mostly; old baby food jars full of brushes and pencils and things to the left.

Although sometimes it looks more like this. Five of seven basses in at the time!!

A beautiful autumn wreath that someone recently made for the front door.