great care on your part, or you will spoil your back; please
note how it is done by me. I fix it in the double vice, the flat
side, where is drawn the outline, facing me as I sit before it on a
high stool. With saw 68 in my hands, drawn up taut by the slip of
wood at the top tightening the string it controls, I proceed to cut
from the top _straight_ down by the button, until I meet the line
forming the upper sweep of the back. But you will observe how very
careful I am as I prepare to turn the saw from straight to right
angle (which is really at left curve at the button). I grease the
saw well, turn it at both handles, so that when I again put the saw
in motion, the steel lies flat, edges or teeth to the left, the
frame of the saw upright.

[Illustration: PLATE III.]

I hope I have made this sufficiently plain, and that what I have
said will enable you to go well round the violin back, guarding the
corners, always greasing your saw as you prepare to round them,
rather giving them a wide berth than brushing close past, almost
touching the line, in a hurry, when snap may go your steel or a
corner of the back.

As intimated, you must clear the line by one-sixteenth inch, so that
no risk is run by taking too much wood off, cleverly put on again,
when matched by an expert, but which could hardly be done by you
just yet.

Well, as you see, I have cleared the rough back from the main body
of the still rougher oblong wood, and it must now be my business to
cut this rough outline to its true form, which is done by looking at
the flat side where this pencil outline is, and with a very sharp,
flat-ground knife, specially made for violin makers, tool 19. But
before this is done, the main body must be reduced at the edges, on
the convex or outer side, of course, to about the thickness of
three-sixteenths of an inch good, which is a simple matter, if done
with one and a quarter inch gouge 43, in this manner.

In the middle of the bench, which will be your general one, and five
inches from the edge, cut a one-inch square right through the wood,
and fit a long stop therein, the tighter the better, and somewhat
rounded off at the inner corner facing you. This will serve to keep
one end of back or belly rigid when the other end is provided for,
as I do thus:--About fifteen inches from this square top, and to
your right, clamp down a piece of hard wood, three inches broad, and
a quarter of an inch thick, square with the bench, and