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Updated: June 13, 2025
Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling the fingerboard and scratching the strings without an atom of tone, as the mechanical monkeys do that boobies call fine players. * This is a definition of the Heaven-born fiddler by Pate Bailey, a gypsy tinker and celestial violinist.
The modern, simplest and best way is to have ready a soft wood mould with a square or flat back for the under or circular part of the neck, and a similar but flatter one to fit above on the fingerboard. It is not very often that the nut or small block over which the strings pass on to the pegs gets loose, if it does, it is the result of bad fitting and careless glueing.
The fingerboard should not be treated as a permanent part of the structure never to come undone, it should be so secured as to last as long as required under fair usage, but in case of violence it is best that it should snap clear from the neck than hold tight enough to distribute, or concentrate, the strain on other and more delicate parts of the structure.
After some little time the part where the ebony joins the graft will appear worked down quite smooth, some finer degrees of the paper will reduce the surface to almost a polish. The nut receiving a part of the working will now present an appearance as regards form only of having been left from a reduction of the fingerboard stopping short at a straight line.
This brings me to fixing the neck, and I do it thus: In the first place, I have to remember that the length from nut on the fingerboard, inner side, to the bridge, must be, when all is finished, thirteen inches exactly, and the angle as above.
Of course the width of each groove must be in agreement with the thickness of the string, the widest being the D, the G a little less, the A less still and the E least of all; the E should be a trifle closer to the fingerboard than the D or G, the last, having the widest swing during play, should be raised further off the board than the others.
The cushion or sandbag must be brought into use, the violin put face downwards, the fingerboard resting in a hollow. The neck or most convenient part for holding the whole with firmness must be held tightly, the chisel then worked downwards from the button, but not too far so as to cut into the portion that is to gradually enlarge, or form the quarter of a circle or the thickest part of the neck.
This will drive in the oil, consolidating the whole, and as it will dry inside after a time, keep a good smooth surface under usage. Some repairers continue to varnish or polish along the sides of the fingerboard to the extremity. There is no objection to this, and if very neatly done, the general effect is enhanced.
After that, on the face of the wood that is to say, the front, as though looking at the fingerboard, I mark at four-and-a-quarter inches from end of the head, which is to be the end of peg-box, and three inches from that, the narrow end of said box that is to be cut. Then I take centre of narrow end and mark off seven-sixteenths of an inch width of said end, five-eighths of an inch for broad end.
Then, as to width of fingerboard a narrow one is often clung to as "so nice and handy," etc., but it is forgotten that the strings in consequence have to be brought closer together than clean fingering requires; and, moreover, the E string must, of necessity, be brought too near the edge of the ebony for firm stopping; so I have no sympathy whatever with a narrow or too thin fingerboard and neck.
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