Workshop: William Booth II Double Bass Ep 2, Restoring the Arch on the Front Plate

In this episode, we follow Dan and George as they slowly correct the arch on the double bass. Generally, this instrument has a very well constructed deep arch but being over nearly 200 years old, this arch has sunk a little in places and correcting it is important. In classic violin making, a plaster cast can be used for this. In the Thomas & George Martin workshop, this is approached in a different way. Steam and clamping is used to slowly correct the arch. Some parts of the front is clamped in a position and bags of sand are clamped to the front with some light pressure to encourage the front back into its original shape. Dan marks the areas to be corrected on the front with a chinagraph pencil. This is a slow process and although this video is only a few minutes long, the actual time for doing this work was around six months with at least biweekly corrections. The bass bar and any internal cleats or repairs are kept in place until they need to be removed to work on a certain area. Once this process is