Howard Scott's unfinished sonata

It started like any other birthday party for a patriarch.

Howard Scott was turning 87, and on Saturday, at the assisted care facility where he lives in Lacey, Wash., he was surrounded by his children, his grandchildren, and his great grandchildren. On his harmonica, he played ''My Blue Heaven." Folks danced. They sang ''Happy Birthday." He blew out candles, and everybody had cake and ice cream.

What made this party unique, though, was the birthday present. Everyone gathered in a circle around the old man, who was dressed in flannel shirt, jeans, and wingtip shoes. He was joined by his grandson Nolle Pritchard, 30, who has just completed a two-year course in cabinetmaking in Boston, at the North Bennet Street School in the North End.

''We have a surprise for you, Bapa," said Pritchard, using the family term of endearment. Pritchard opened a case and presented his grandfather with a new and finely crafted violin -- not just any violin, mind you, but a violin 60 years in the making, a violin with a history so precarious, so serendipitous, and so romantic that it could have been conceived only by the Muse of Music.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The story begins at the outbreak of World War II. Scott was a student at the University of Washington. His roommate was a Japanese-American who was rounded up with other Japanese-Americans and incarcerated by the government as a security threat. So incensed was Scott at the affront to his friend that he refused to serve in the military, and he was eventually sentenced to prison at Washington's McNeil Island.

One day, walking the grounds on a work detail, he noticed a fallen maple. On a whim, he asked the guard for permission to use the tree to build a violin. The guard gave him an odd look, as Scott now recalls, but said, sure, go ahead.

It was no small undertaking. Scott had taken a woodworking course in high school, but in the art of crafting a violin he had no experience, no teacher, no tools. He didn't know how to play one, either. At the public library, his wife, Ruane, found a book on constructing violins. She typed up page after page of instructions. She traced schematic drawings and, over the months, mailed them to Scott.

Meanwhile, he sought the advice of inmates in the carpentry shop. He retrieved discarded metal fragments and, with no objections by the guards, brought them to the prison blacksmith, who forged them into tools. Day after day, against the odds, Scott labored to create his violin, drawing, cutting, carving, whittling.

By the time he was released from prison, the violin was only half done. He wrapped the bits and pieces in a shoe box and stored them in a bedroom closet. He returned to the University of Washington, received a doctorate, became a professor of child psychology, and lived a fruitful life.

As the years went by, the story of the violin grew into family lore. Sometimes Scott wondered aloud how his violin might have sounded. But there was a paradox, too. The shards symbolized the idealism and courage of Scott's youth, but as long as the violin was left in the closet, unformed, unfinished, and unplayed, it was nothing more than bones in a box.

And yet it was never out of Scott's mind. Once, five years ago, as Pritchard recalls, his grandfather retrieved the box and showed him the scraps of wood that would have been his violin.

''I was amazed," he says, ''and wanted to do something, but I didn't have the skills."

Nearly 60 years after Scott had begun to work on his violin, Pritchard came east to Boston's North Bennet Street School to hone his skills as a cabinetmaker.

One afternoon in the summer of 2004, in order to defray the $13,000 tuition, he was repairing a ceiling at the school and chatting with a fellow student, 30-year-old Jess Fox.

That's when the Muse of Music stepped in, for Fox's course of study was violin making and repair. Knowing his skill at cabinetmaking, she asked him to build two nightstands for her. In discussing price, she said that if he needed work done on a violin, they could trade skills.

She meant it as a joke, and he laughed. After all, how many people have violins in need of restoration?

That night, however, Pritchard thought of his grandfather's violin. He mentioned it to Fox, and they made a pact. He'd build her tables. She'd finish his violin.

When the remnants arrived from the West Coast, the major components were there, Fox says. A rib structure, front and back plate, arched and graduated, and a scroll fully carved.

''When I first saw it, I thought it was amazing that he could do what he did from typed-up notes and hand tracings. I mean, he had made his own calipers out of maple.

''Trying to decipher his notes has been fascinating. His not-quite-accurate interpretations give the violin a unique character."

For months, Fox and Pritchard worked nights and weekends, she laboring in her shop on his violin and he working upstairs in his shop on her tables. Fox made it a point to leave the violin's idiosyncrasies.

''These burn marks are from whatever tool he used to bend the wood," she says. ''He needed water and heat, so maybe he used a radiator. Those marks give the violin its singularity. I did only a little finish work on the scroll. Otherwise, it's absolutely the way he carved it.

''It's good that it was in separate pieces. A lot of problems happen when one surface is glued to another, because there's tension and things can start cracking. The wood was carved, cut, and bent, so basically, what I had to do was put it together."

She assembled the pieces, glued the base bar, set the neck, cut mortises, put in linings, added sound holes, fixed the bridge, and scraped, sanded, and varnished.

''The neck and scroll and sides are maple, all right, and for the top we generally use spruce, but he used some other type of coniferous wood," she says. ''I don't know what it is, but it's not standard for a violin top."

That question was answered Saturday in Scott's remarks to his family. The wood on top of the violin came from a prison meat crate.

A few weeks ago, at an informal ceremony with friends in the violin room at North Bennet Street School, Fox surprised Pritchard with a bound copy of his grandmother's notes and schematics. The binding was done by Stacie Dolin, who had studied bookbinding at North Bennet Street School.

Nestling the violin under her chin, Fox played a toe-tapping rendition of ''West Fork Gals."

So, how does the violin sound?

''Very sweet," says Fox. ''It'll make a better instrument for someone who plays fiddle rather than classical, but it sounds better than anyone here at school expected."

Having heard the violin for the first time at Saturday's party, Scott said it sounded low, more like a viola.

''I think that's because it's slightly larger," he said by telephone, ''but it's a beautiful piece of work."

Now, Pritchard has moved home to Washington with his wife and infant daughter to begin his career as a cabinetmaker. When Fox graduates in June, she'll return to Minnesota with her husband and spend her life working on violins. Scott, meanwhile, is going to inveigle one of his grandchildren into teaching him to play his new violin.

There will never be a mystery about its origin. Artisans who craft violins sign their work.

Inside the violin, Fox attached a label. It says: ''Made by Howard B. Scott, Federal Prison Camp, McNeil Island, Washington, 1945, and completed by Jess Fox, Boston, 2005."

Jack Thomas can be reached at jackthomas100@msn.com.