Beautiful work again Dusie ...have you ever thought about doing one with those fabulous 3D parchment rosettes that I admire in some of these old instruments.?
Watercolour paper, 300gsm or 600gsm, maybe oiled with linseed oil and cured, may be a useful and relatively lower cost practice medium for this type of rosette.
Looks nice!
That's one wsy to make a back when all you have is thin wood scraps
I do like that shape.... Almost, but not quite a machete.
Nowhere near as difficult as they appear to be. Having said that for the very first one that I made it resulted in some 25 different metal punches having to be made. It was a rose pretty much identical to the last one shown earlier. Having made the punches I think it took me 4 or 5 days to make (this was in the early 2000's). Not what I would term commercially viable and it's not the sort of task that I enjoy. I've also done parchment roses with just 2 or 3 layers (essentially flat, not the sunken type) or a combination of wood and parchment. Those are the type I prefer. The multi layered sunken type are rather typically baroque, a bit too ornate for my tastes.
Impressive roses!
What's your secret to carving the hardwood to be inserted from behind? I've found my skalpels I use for spruce soundboards struggle with hardwood. Is it cut with a coping saw like oud ones and thicker than it looks?
Impressive roses!
The layer of parchment with wood was done with a scalpel, I'm referring to the wood section.The wood section is very thin, standard veneer. I have done thicker types ( circa 1 mm with a fret saw). It is somewhat easier than using a scalpel on a lute rose in spruce. Actually scalpels come pretty sharp but they can be made even sharper by stropping. As you well know it's the difference between the soft and hard grain lines that makes carving a lute rose difficult. Hardwoods like Pear don't quite have the same problem. I've only done a few lute roses and I used the cutting gouge method rather than using a scalpel. Again the gouge method requires a homemade tool. I'm calling it a gouge but they are incredibly thin, scalpel blade thin but curved. Some lute makers use the scalpel method, some the thin gouge method. Both methods work. I guess the real secret is incredibly sharp tools, magnification, good light, patience and a lot of practice. I'm never going to be any good at carving lute roses. It's just something that doesn't appeal to me but of course you have to admire the folk who spend all those hours trying to perfect it.