Boy Makes Violin With Axe And Knife

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 17, 21 January 1937, Page 5

Boy Makes Violin With Axe And Knife

SULPHUR, Okla.—A 19-year-old bo) who lives on a farm near here has mad a himself a violin out of a mulberry tree. The boy is Albert Underwood, and he doesn’t play a violin. He plays a guitar, and the one he uses on state occasions was made from the door of an abandoned car. Frank Leonard, county supervisor of the district where Underwood works at painting and repairing rural schoolhouses, has 'found no explanation for the boy’s interest in making instruments. No one in his family is interested in music or in cabinet work. The boy has had no training in either. All that the Underwood boy used in making the violin was his penknife, a two-edged axe, and sandpaper. The instrument contains 146 carved pieces. The violin, other than the expense of the strings, cost no more than 25 cents for glue and varnish. It is being sent through Oklahoma for NYA youths to see. The instrument, with its homemade bow, is wrapped in a flour sack, and packed in a three-ply cardboard case, hand-made and tied together with second-hand pieces of copper wire. On a square of paper glued inside the violin may be seen this printing: “Made in U.S.A. by Albert Underwood, March April, 1936, Sulphur, Okla.”