Nevada City, Calif. ? Joseph Rashid has just finished making his 95th violin, in time for his 95th birthday.

“This is my best yet,” he says, running his hand over the amber wood and pronouncing it as fine as his favorite, the esteemed No. 4, which he completed in 1937.

Rashid has been a boxer, a carpenter and an engineer, and since he retired to Nevada City in the early 1980s, he has devoted his time to creating violins that have been played by such world-renowned musicians as Yehudi Menuhin, Glenn Dicterow and members of the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras.

Rashid already has surpassed the icon of the craft, Antonio Stradivari, in longevity, at least.

Stradivari built violins until he was 93. Working with assistants, he made more than 1,100 in all, and some 600 survive. The Italian craftsman was copied by many, so thousands of violins bear his name, some produced years after Stradivari’s death in 1737. The record price for a Stradivarius violin was nearly $1.6 million in 1998.

No plans to stop

Rashid, meanwhile, has always worked alone, and as he turns 95, he has no plans to stop. He expects to finish two more violins in 2005. And while he has received offers, he has never sold a single one.

All 95 of his creations now reside in his modest home in this historic Gold Rush town about 150 miles from San Francisco. Row upon row of the gleaming instruments are housed neatly and chronologically in cabinets he also designed and built. The colors range from deep russet to nearly red to the amber gold of No. 95, the latest violin Rashid has varnished. The top of the cabinets are lined with photos and letters from some of the renowned violinists who have played Rashid’s creations.

“I put so much care into them. I love them. It is important to me not to connect money with the violins,” Rashid says. “All my life I’ve believed what’s wrong with the world is that everyone’s trying to get rich. The greed for money is out of proportion.”

Using a tiny wood plane that he made himself, violin maker Joe Rashid, 95, works on a violin at his home workshop in Nevada City, Calif.

Rewarding sounds

It is far more rewarding to hear his violins played by many different musicians, he says.

Rashid says he also has “scientific” reasons for keeping all his violins. As violins age, the wood dries and the shape can change in ways that are subtle, but which alter the sound. Rashid likes to dissect his instruments to see just how they have matured.

“I wanted to do research on them, and in order to do that I had to take them apart every few years. If I sold them, I couldn’t do that,” Rashid says. “I’ve learned a lot from them.”

It is exceedingly unusual to keep such a collection of instruments together, says LeRoy Peterson, a violin professor at Pacific Union College in Angwin, Calif., who has become a good friend. “It’s a gold mine.”

“He couldn’t get $1 million for this because it’s new,” says Peterson, lifting Rashid’s latest creation to play. “A Stradivarius is worth that because it’s a Stradivarius. But Joe’s are just as good.”

Some of the 95 violins made by violin maker Joe Rashid are seen at his home. Rashid has been a boxer, carpenter and an engineer in his lifetime.

Key to quality

Rashid says the key to their quality is that he doesn’t bend the spruce and maple he uses, and he dries the wood for at least 15 years so the shape of the finished violin is stable. That way, the sound doesn’t change through time as the wood ages.

Using handcrafted tools he engineered himself, he shapes each piece of wood in a shop off his garage, where unfinished parts of the next violins line the walls. When the weather turns cold, he brings most of the workshop into his kitchen near a wood-burning stove, where he sits for hours scraping thin shavings of wood to create the curves and arches.

“To me, time doesn’t mean anything. I’ll be working on them, and I’ll forget to eat. I’ll sit down and when I look up, it’s an hour later,” Rashid says.

Pleasing pace

It takes him two months to apply the multiple coats of thin varnish — a combination of linseed oil, turpentine and rosin similar to the recipe used by Stradivari.

At this rate, he produces just one or two violins a year. The pace pleases him. “If I made one a month, it would just be another commercial violin. I couldn’t give them the care I give these,” he says.

His meticulousness comes naturally after a career as an aeronautical engineer for defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where he retired with several patents under his name. But he didn’t always do such delicate work.

After graduating from the University of Detroit with a degree in engineering in 1932 — the height of the Depression — he found no market for his skills. “I didn’t have anything to do, so I started boxing,” he says.

His misshapen nose remains a testament to that career move — he broke it in a fight, and it took a year to heal. While recovering, he saw a newspaper ad that offered violin lessons for 85 cents a week. If he attended 52 lessons, he could keep the violin.

A year and $44 later, he had his violin. Then he became a carpenter’s apprentice and disassembled the instrument to study its construction. He also continued his violin lessons, studying under a conductor who tutored Rashid in exchange for boxing lessons for his two sons.

“It was a good trade,” Rashid says.