Students on the Cutting Edge of an Ancient Art : Music: A master violin maker has set up shop at Cal Lutheran for two weeks, drawing enthusiasts from as far away as Brazil.

On one side of the room, Julie Katana, with two sets of eyeglasses perched on her nose, bends over the top half of a viola, planing the surface into sheer smoothness with tiny, meticulous strokes.

On the other, Harold Hirsch brushes hot glue on the maple frame of a cello, while Jim Viele sits patiently next to two slabs of pale wood just barely beginning to resemble parts of a violin, waiting for directions on what to do next.

The three are among a class of 10 students learning a unique skill at Cal Lutheran University this summer; the centuries-old art of violin making in the Italian tradition.

They have come to Thousand Oaks from such far-flung places as Brazil and Hawaii, just to study with Karl Roy, a master violin maker from Germany who has been building stringed instruments for more than 40 years.

The two-week class is the only one of its kind on the West Coast. When it ends Saturday, Roy will travel across the country to teach a similar session at the University of New Hampshire.

Building even just one instrument under the tutelage of Roy can take as long as three years, but his students say the skills he passes on are well worth the wait.

“He’s one of the very best in the world,” said Katana, a secretary from Stockton who began studying with Roy in 1991. “He holds nothing back. I expect I’ll study with him at least another five years.”

His students range from professionals such as native Brazilian Rafael Sando, who can bang out an entire violin in about two weeks, to complete novices such as Mike Krawtz, who is in his fourth year of classes with Roy and is nowhere near finishing his first violin.

The 10 students spend five days a week inside a small classroom at Cal Lutheran that has been converted to a workshop. A plastic tarp on the floor is covered with wood shavings and sawdust, a band saw stands near a window and littered all around the room are the tools needed to create the curves and edges of a fine violin.

“What this class really is is how to use tools,” Katana said. “That we end up with a violin in the end is almost incidental.”

She watched Roy as he tapped on the edges of a violin frame to determine if they were even. He cocked his head and listened for the slightly off sound indicating something was not quite right. Hearing it, he pointed it out to student Charles Pracha and then began to expertly smooth out the edges with a planer.

“He makes it look so easy,” Katana said enviously.

Wherever Roy goes in the classroom he draws a crowd. When he shows Viele how to gouge out the top piece of his violin and form its gentle arching shape, all the students rush over to observe, even though all have already passed that stage themselves.

In Europe the training of a violin master still follows the same course it has for centuries. After three years of basic training at a school such as the Bavarian State School of Violin Making, where Roy used to teach, a young builder is sent out on a five-year apprenticeship. An exam follows, and passing it bestows upon him or her the status of master.

Although there are a handful of violin-making schools in the United States, Sando said it was impossible to find formal training in Brazil.

Sando said he began playing the violin at age 15. And while he never considered himself much of a player, he became interested in making minor repairs to the instrument. He was trained as a physicist.

The acoustical aspects of the violin intrigued him, and before long he began to build them himself. Now he supports his wife and daughter by making violins and other stringed instruments.

“When you make one you cannot stop,” Sando said. “It’s like a disease.”

Viele started building violins in his San Diego garage several years ago. He made five, he said, using such untraditional materials as plywood and scraps of wood, things Roy would not allow in his classroom.

Nonetheless, Viele is proud of his garage creations, pulling a Polaroid photograph from one of his pockets and passing it around as though it was an image of his firstborn.

He checked several books out of the library on violin construction before enrolling in Roy’s class. The idea of how-to books brought a grimace of utter disgust to the teacher’s face.

“This art has never been written down or published,” Roy said. “You have to study it on the bench. That is the only way it can be taught.”

That said, he darts around the room, checking on the progress of his students, complaining about the quality of the makeshift equipment at Cal Lutheran and maintaining a firm but friendly teaching relationship with his admiring students.

“I will get very angry if you’re gouging that way,” Roy warned Viele, as the student mishandled the sharp steel instrument, bringing it precariously close to his wrist. “Believe me, if you run into this, we will run into big problems with CLU. They don’t like blood on the floor.”

After a quick demonstration from Roy, where the wood peeled off like butter and each stroke of the gouge ended with a flourish, Viele revised his grip on the instrument and took more careful aim at the piece of wood.

“Much better,” Roy told him.

Although the students welcome any encouraging word from the master, the class is not a competitive one. Because it is open to professionals and amateurs, people such as Krawtz are welcome.

Krawtz, who is from the island of Maui in Hawaii, has traveled to New Hampshire three times and Cal Lutheran once. He is far behind students such as Sando, still concentrating hard on gouging out the inside of the instrument’s top half.

For him, the work itself is pleasure.

“I don’t really plan to finish at the rate I’m going,” he said. “But if I do, I think I’ll hang it on the wall and just look at it.”