Craftsman of fine instruments no longer fiddling around.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

For much of his career, Jonathan Franke created tools for high-tech factories. His finely detailed work might result in a mold, to give one example, that makes parts for a new computer printer.

Today, working alone in a one-man shop, he crafts stringed instruments that wouldn't be out of place in 17th and 18th century Italy. Franke, 47, has become a violin maker, supporting himself full time by producing fine violins, violas and cellos that he sells to musicians around the country.

He builds the instruments at his modest hilltop home in Monroe. His living room is lined with violins, violas and mandolins he has built. In the small shop in back, color photographs of various violins hang on the walls over two small woodworking benches, a 10-inch band saw and a drill press. The room smells of wood chips.

It is here that Franke makes the instruments that make his living, bringing in $7,500 for a violin, $8,000 for a viola and $20,000 for a cello.

Franke grew up in Wisconsin, where he learned the basics of tool- and die-making at a vocational college and completed a professional apprenticeship. He moved to Oregon in 1981 after discovering the state's charms while here doing volunteer work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

He built his first instrument - a mandolin - strictly for recreation in about 1985.

"It was a kit. They supplied all the wood and did some of the rough carving," he explains. "I did three kits and then I just started building things from scratch."

In 1992, Franke quit his day job and began making instruments full time.

In 1995, he won the Grand Champion Tone Award from the Violin Makers Association of Arizona International, one of several such awards displayed in his shop.

With a few exceptions - he uses an electric drill press, for example, to rough out his materials - Franke builds his instruments the way it's been done for centuries, making careful cuts with tiny planes and files.

After choosing a design, he typically begins with a well-seasoned piece of spruce or maple, choosing the wood carefully for its straight grain and stability. A violin takes him five weeks to complete, and he works on only one instrument at a time.

After gluing two planks together along their long edge - the long seam goes down the middle of the instrument - he begins carving the violin top, a thin and delicate piece that is curved in three dimensions.

Designing a violin is an exercise in compromise.

"You don't want to build an instrument that is too thick," he says. "It will last 500 years, but it will sound like a cigar box. And if you build it too thin, because of the pressure of the strings trying to collapse the instrument, it won't hold up over time."

The back is formed in a similar process. The sides of the violin are made from 1 millimeter thick pieces of wood that are heated and bent to shape, and then the top and back are precisely fitted to the sides.

Finally, the carved scroll is glued on, the whole thing is varnished with several coats, and the strings are installed.

That's when Franke gets to enjoy the real fruit of his labors.

"Every instrument I build turns out a little different," Franke says. "I can't predict the sound. I have a sense of what the instrument will sound like. But not until it's strung up and played do I know the actual tone."

CAPTION(S):

Jonathan Franke plays one of his hand-built violas in his Monroe workshop.