About the Peg Box & Scoll of a Violin

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. I’m going to talk about the peg box and scroll of the violin. And here we have a piece of maple and the violin maker has carved a decorative scroll into the end of the neck, and I can slowly rotate it so it can be seen from different angles. The carving of the scroll is considered one of the signatures of a violin maker, they’re very, very elaborate scrolls that are really primitive scrolls. I would say that this is relatively average looking scroll, this is all a solid piece of wood and a peg box is carved from it and this is a bit of a carving trick to do it cleanly. Make room for the pegs and the strings inside and yet retain structural strength is really quiet a challenge and seen from the different sides that the peg holes can be seen. In this peg box the peg holes weren’t evenly spaced but you can see that they do follow something that of the curve of the scroll and you can see them from two angles here. And just for comparison I’ll show another peg box I’m not taking the strings off of this one but on this one it appears that the holes are somewhat more evenly spaced they’re still not completely evenly spaced but perhaps they’re a little more evenly spaced on this one."