(upbeat violin music) Dennis McCarten admits he is no maestro on the violin, but he can make beautiful music.

This is one of his instruments.

For nearly 20 years, McCarten has been making, restoring and repairing violins as well as violas and cellos in his Pawtucket mill shop.

For him, it's a career combining fine woodworking skills with his affinity for Irish tunes.

(mellow violin music) In addition to the violin, McCarten also once took piano lessons.

- When I was in parochial school, I wasn't very good at that either.

I didn't like it.

Sitting on a piano bench with a nun was not my idea of a good time.

- [Pamela] So McCarten grew up to become a lawyer.

For almost 30 years, he was a Providence defense attorney handling major cases and was honored by the Rhode Island Bar Association for his professionalism.

He's still licensed to practice, but he heard another calling from the strains of the violin.

(mellow violin music) - [Dennis] I am drawn to it as an object, the shape of it, the color of it, the curves, and that's something that goes way, way back.

- [Pamela] All the way back to Cranston, where he grew up in the shadow of the old Narraganset Brewery.

McCarten's neighbor was the brew master's son, on the far left, and McCarten on the far right says he was five when his playmate introduced him to the violin.

- I think it was in their basement.

He showed me this thing he had that was a violin.

I can't describe it to you other than it was the right shape.

It had the four strings, it had a bow and he allowed me to pick it up and draw the bow across the string and it was, yeah, I was smitten.

(mellow violin music) - McCarten's love went unrequited for decades, even though he eventually learned to play and also fiddled with constructing violins from kits.

A hobby called being a Luthier.

Making the jump to being a Luthier from being a lawyer is really an about face.

- Well, I thought so, too.

Okay, I really did.

I said, you know, this is it.

It's something I just felt I really needed to do.

- [Pamela] McCarten says the turning point was the trend of settling cases.

He missed the courtroom drama.

- It was less fun than it had been.

A lot of what I really enjoyed was the most stressful stuff, which the actual courtroom work.

And one of the early epiphanies I had when I started doing this work was that a lot of the problem solving, the creative problem solving I had done as an attorney, it was kind of the same feeling when I'm sitting down with a busted violin and I need to fix it.

- [Pamela] To become a master violin maker, McCarten at age 53 studied for three years full time in an intensive program in Boston.

- It's not just like picking up a saw.

You're not only cutting the wood, you're sculpting it and at the same time listening to it.

Literally, you know, 'cause you're carving the top of a violin and you, you tap it to hear what kind of tone it's making and make sure that it's resonant.

I mean that was the beauty of the great makers.

What you know, what they managed to accomplish.

You think of 400 years ago, making the best violins we still have.

- [Pamela] The best and now most valuable violins are considered to be the ones made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy in the 16 and 1700s.

He perfected the instrument we know today.

This is what a $15 million stratus sounds like.

(upbeat violin music) - This is an Italian instrument made in Cremona, Italy.

- [Pamela] There are string instruments hanging everywhere in McCartney's workshop showroom.

His clientele ranges from a musician with a symphony orchestra to beginning students and adult professionals.

- This is a viola.

It's much larger than a violin.

You wanna hold that?

- Sure.

Oh, it's light.

- Yeah.

Well, we start with about 12 pounds of wood and we end up with about two pounds.

- [Pamela] Violins are primarily made of maple wood, spruce for the top soundboard provides strength and resonance.

It takes McCarten about three months to make a violin.

He starts with a template, designs a mold, and the instrument is created from the inside out.

- If you look at it from the outside, almost looks perfectly symmetrical and actually the inside is not symmetrical because there are structures inside a violin, which have a lot to do with tone production.

- Sculpting the scroll atop the neck is the final phase.

What goes through your mind as you're as a craftsman working on his baby?

- Almost nothing, that's the beauty of it.

And that's one of the reasons, because it's so meditative.

Things have to just fit together without being forced together.

The glue joints have to be perfect and complete.

Two perfectly flat surfaces have to be mated and to achieve those qualities of the material takes concentration.

But to me, the beauty of it is, is getting lost in that space.

- [Pamela] A space that has become his sweet spot.

As sweet as listening to music being played by famed violinist, Itzhak Perlman.

(mellow violin music) What is it about the music of a violin, of a string instrument that's so emotional?

- I've heard it explained that that the violin and even, and the cello even more so than the violin because they exist in the range of the human voice and they don't have artificial stops.

Like pianos have keys or guitars have frets.

There's an infinite number of notes that can be played.

So it mimics almost exactly the human voice.

(mellow violin music) When it's well played, it really is such a natural sounding instrument.

There's nothing forced or artificial about a well played violin.

(mellow violin music)