Last year I finished making another metal plane for the workshop.  It’s based on a plane from the Museo del Violino (Cremona Museum) in Italy.  It was part of a collection of tools from the Stradivari workshop purchased by Italian violin collector Count Cozio in the late 18th Century.  For more information I wrote an earlier post here. Today violin makers are fortunate to have these workshop forms and tools from Stradivari to study. I was interested to reproduce some of the tools in that collection.

This is the original plane without a blade or the wedge to hold the blade in place:

Last year I visited Cremona and it was helpful to see the collection of tools myself. The staff at the museum were kind to provide me with photographs and measurements of the planes.

Museo del Violino in Cremona, Italy

Above is my version of the Stradivari plane.

I’ve used this plane a great deal over the last year and it works very well. The tapered design, with the narrow part of the plane at the back, fits comfortably in my hand.  It’s still a fairly large hand plane and so perhaps more useful for cellos. But I’ve also used it for roughing violin fronts and back into shape since it cuts the wood so effectively and smoothly.