day. But who says the ancients did not use it, or
crocodile skin, or a cloth made in Venice, and somewhat after our
emery cloth? or variously shaped files of different cuttings? At a
time when sculpture and very chaste and highly finished woodwork
would employ it largely, does any one mean to assert that the
violin, not by any means held in the estimation it is to-day, must
receive the dignity of small plane and scraper only, and such a
useful article treated with contempt _because_ it was what it was?
If they do, or any of you do, I should much like to devote an hour
privately to any such, when it should be my business to combat such
a sentiment, more especially as some writers seem to hint that when
sandpaper is used, its scratchy effects can be traced, as I could
bring many of my finest efforts to prove the contrary.

My reason for not using small planes for modelling is, that in the
first cutting you cannot possibly go over the delicate groove
without endangering the surface level--that is to say, if you tear
any part in going against the grain (or sometimes with it) and go
_deeper_ than you should, would you not at once ruin your even flow
of curves as by early arrangement you had set out? your only escape
from fiasco being sinking to a lower surface and sacrificing your
original conception of true proportion.

Therefore, I stand to the system adopted at the outset of my career,
and resume. The wetted surface being thoroughly dry (not apparently
so, but really free from any feeling whatever of dampness) I take
the next degree towards fineness of sandpaper (or if you like the
term "glass-paper" better, by all means adopt it), and I do
precisely as formerly, again and again, until six courses have been
carefully gone over. Then I go over the same ground six times more,
using scrapers 4, 20, 26, 62 alternately, and continually holding up
the surfaces to the light as they develop their curves and archings
truer and more true, as I scrape here and there with great patience
to bring all this about. At this point I suppose you will think the
modelling and surface finishing is finally accomplished, and that
the interesting passages on thicknesses are about to be written. But
it is not so, for the final surface of silk-like smoothness is four
or five coats farther from me yet. So I attack with No. 1 sandpaper
the surface once more, mostly cross-wise this and all following
stages, putting fair pressure and with both hands