Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse
For those of you who don’t know you yet, can you tell us about your company. Is it a family business or not? How many employees do you have? Do you have any specialties as a Wood & Supplies Dealer? Do you do anything other than ToneWood? And, as we are on Luthiers.com, do you play an instrument? (if yes, which one or which ones, if there are several of you?)
Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse is indeed a Belgian family business created 34 years ago in the city of La Louvière (Belgium).
It was founded by my father and myself in 1987 thanks to our shared passion for musical instruments and woodworking.
My father had learned violin making from a luthier in La Louvière, he unfortunately left us two years ago at the age of 87, he was still active in the enterprise.
We are now two administrators in the company and we take charge of the research, cut, and sale of our products with the same passion from the beginning.
We only specialized in curly maple supplies for violin making.
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse – Can you tell us about different types of wood that are specific to your region? Are there particularities to your region or country in terms of production possibilities? Are you subject to special laws or production limitations each year?
Finding wood is one of the most complex operations in our business.
Each year, numerous rigorous searches are necessary in order to discover the most beautiful specimens meeting all the essential criteria for a wood of violin making.
Not all regions of France provide maple trees that meet these criteria. Belgium does not have a suitable territory for this.
There is no limitation as to the volume of production, but the curly maple is a rare and precious wood and if certain subjects meet the aesthetic criteria they do not always meet the criteria of sound obviously very important for the lutherie.
This means that we can only find a few eligible specimens.
One tree in a thousand meets the aesthetic and sound criteria of high quality allowing us to satisfy a customer of demanding professional luthiers.
The number of trees that we can acquire each year is always random.
Can you tell us about your flagship productions? What are the most common requests, and at the same time the rarest requests? Are you in a position to answer all types of requests for your luthier clients when they have custom model projects with rare or precious woods?
We produce complete supplies, Back, Neck and Ribs, from the same tree for the violin family, ie Violin, Viola, Cello, Double bass.
Our flagship product is probably the quartet, of which the four pieces (2 violins 1 viola and 1 cello) are entirely performed in the same tree.
The most commonly requested supplies are the 1 or 2 pieces violin backs which are also our largest production, the rarest being the 1 piece cello backs.
As far as possible, we sometimes respond to specific customer requests based on the availability of our stock.
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse – For some of our Internet users who are not yet very familiar with the techniques related to your profession, can you explain us your complete manufacturing process. From the birth of a tree to the making of a set for an instrument?
Our work begins with the search for trees that meet the Lutherie criteria.
This is a very important and very long part of our work because it requires many trips and not always useful. It is also the task that requires the most knowledge and experience due to the uncertainties that reign over the internal structure of wood.
A wood can be interesting in appearance and not eligible for cutting for the defects it contains.
Then you have to acquire this tree by offering bids, then repatriate it to perform state of the art cutting rules in our workshops in La Louvière. We then proceed to a natural outdoor drying under shelter before storage in our warehouses under constant and controlled humidity for good conservation.
As we have just mentioned the instrument sets in our previous article, can you give us the list of the instrument sets you offer? For example: acoustic guitar set, electric guitar set, ukulele set, etc. ?
We produce complete supplies, back, neck, Ribs, from the same tree for the violin family, ie Violin, Viola, Cello, Contra-bass.
But we also provide, in smaller quantities, supplies for classical guitar, jazz guitar, Game viola dand other instruments whose measurements are such that they can be built into basic supplies.
For our professional Internet users who wish to order wood and your other products from your company, can you tell us how they should go about it? Do you have an e-commerce website so that customers can order and track the delivery of their purchases? How do you manage deliveries? Do you use specialized carriers (transporters)? Do you use specific packaging so that customers can be sure that your products will arrive in good condition, especially in the case of sets dedicated to acoustic instruments which are perhaps more fragile than others? Do you deliver internationally?
To acquire our supplies, luthiers can come directly to us in the warehouse to make their choice, by appointment 7 days a week.
We also have a website where photo catalogs are available for consultation. There are many backgrounds for violin, Viola, cello, double bass and quartet.
These catalogs represent a large part of our stock, photos of instrument backgrounds that luthiers can appreciate one by one and thus make their choice, note the corresponding references and send us their order by email.
Delivery is made only by a specialized carrier (UPS) which allows us to track the delivery and keep our customers informed.
We deliver all over the world.
Our packaging is mainly cardboard packaging, for larger parts we reinforce the packaging with single “UNALITE” panels to ensure delivery in good condition.
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse – Can you tell us what advice you offer your customers in terms of the sizes of ToneWoods sets to buy in relation to their needs depending on the instruments they need to make? If you have a sizing guide, can you describe it for us?
All of our supplies meet a template that allows you to build any type of instrument in its category.
For a violin for example, our backgrounds allow you to make any type of violin because we always leave a margin compared to the standard template requested by our customers.
Many Wood & Supplies Dealers offer a whole category of products as supplements to their ToneWoods range. What other products do you offer besides ToneWoods?
We are only specialized in supplying Curly Maple. No other wood species and no other products.
Tonewood for Violin Makers – Do you give advice to luthiers who buy your ToneWoods on wood finishing treatments? Do you offer finishing products, such as varnishes for example? Do you offer any for sale?
Our customers have requests for more or less old supplies, with more or less density, on a particular characteristic of wood, and on which we know how to orient them.
The other aspects of lutherie are specific and specific to each luthier, they are outside our tasks.
Wood legislation has changed a lot over the last few years? How are you managing this? Do the laws of your country oblige you to respect new production rules?
We are not affected by these changes.
And in terms of ecology, what is your policy? Have you put in place any particular things?
Regarding ecology, we are very respectful of the standards and rules in force.
We only use the processes of the French National Forest Organization to acquire our trees.
For our work, we only use power tools that run on electricity a few months a year (3 or 4 depending on the season), and we do not use chemicals.
All our wood offcuts are used for heating purposes.
Computers are now present in all types of jobs. Do you use special software in your trade? Or do you use robotic machines? Or does your trade still use non-computerized / robotized tools?
We do not use robotics or computers to produce our pieces. Only mechanical tools.
Are there schools and/or special training courses to prepare young people to enter your profession? Or does the transmission remain a family affair? If you know of any schools or training courses, can you give us their names?
There is no training school, and transmission is a family Business.
When you need it, is it easy to find staff in your profession? Do you have specific recruitment channels? Do you have partnerships with schools in your region? If so, which ones?
We don’t have this need.
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse – What advice would you give to young luthiers starting out in the business? Doesn’t the choice of woods allow them to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and wouldn’t it be an interesting way to find their way and their “trademark”?
Each tree is different!
And in addition to looking for the tree that will suit the violin as you track a nugget, working with a noble material such as wood, it is also looking for the right cuts through the tree, which will best suit luthiers and which makes this profession so interesting.
Each Luthier has his convictions and his working methods which differentiate him from his colleagues according to his projects and his sensibilities.
We try to provide them with the best pieces with the best presentation possible, so as to secure their purchase without any unpleasant surprises when working with their piece of wood.
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse
You can contact Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse through the contact form
on their personal page on Luthiers.com here:
https://luthiers.com/listing/bois-de-lutherie-aigrisse-sa/
We also invite you to follow him on his various social networks:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michel.aigrisse
- Website: http://www.bois-lutherie-aigrisse.com
Tonewood for Violin Makers Bois de Lutherie Aigrisse
In the coming weeks, as for others luthiers for plucked string instruments, luthiers for bowed string instruments, amps & effects makers, wood & supplies dealers, lutherie events, jobs, schools & teachers subscribers on our site, you will be able to follow our series of mini-interviews dedicated to the fascinating world of luthiers.
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