Music Maker 
80-year-old spends a year crafting cello from scratch
10:00 PM PST on Monday, November 27, 2006
By MELISSA EISELEIN
The Press-Enterprise
RIVERSIDE - Feryl Barnett doesn't know how to play the cello. But she does know how to build one.
Barnett enlisted the help of a local violin builder. Together, they practiced the old art of passing down the tradition of hand-craftsmanship. In this case, Barnett, 80, of Riverside , was the apprentice and 23-year-old Joshua Blevins, owner of J. B. Blevins Violin Shop in Riverside , was the craftsman.
"It was really neat to see how she persevered with this cello. ... She's got a very critical eye and applied that to hand coordination," Blevins said. "I'd enjoy making another instrument with her."
Barnett is a music lover. She's dabbled in piano and played the violin when she was a schoolgirl.
When asked why she chose to make a cello, Barnett's answer was simple: "Because I couldn't build a piano."
Barnett did not want to use a kit with ready-cut pieces that she would glue together. Instead, she insisted on building one from scratch.
"Josh was so good and so patient with me. He drew a picture of a cello and named everything for me," Barnett said.
And then, Blevins walked her through the task of making her cello.
With Blevins' help, Barnett formed the body from planks of maple and spruce, cutting, planing and sanding them to precise dimensions. Some pieces had to be planed to a thickness of 1.5 millimeters, Blevins said.
 The making of a cello includes forming the body from planks of maple and spruce, cutting, planing and sanding them.
"You're looking for the wood to be flexible, but not too thin. It needs to be strong," Blevins said.
Then, Barnett made the fingerboard from ebony and carved the ornamental curve at the top out of dense maple. Finally, she coated the cello with five coats of varnish especially made for musical instruments, she said.
"The most difficult part was getting the confidence to use the tools. I was afraid of ruining the whole thing," Barnett said. "The first board I ruined because I planed right through it."
She worked on the cello two days a week for the first six months, and then she increased her work time to three days a week. It took a year to finish her cello.
Diligence and determination are part of Barnett's personality, one that made her a conscientious nurse, said longtime friend Jane Regalbuto, 79, of Ontario .
Barnett began her nursing career at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana in 1955. Regalbuto met Barnett in 1979 when they were accepted into Kaiser's grueling nurse-practitioners program. Students in the program had to pass the same tests as doctors to graduate, Regalbuto said.
"When I first met her, she had gone skiing and broke her leg. She went into the program in a cast," Regalbuto said.
A broken leg was the least of Barnett's worries. That year, her eldest daughter, Trina, was killed in a car crash.
Barnett persevered. With the support of her husband, Bob, 80, and youngest daughter, Traci, 47, of Laguna Hills , Barnett completed the program and later went on to get her doctorate.
TOWNSFOLK
Feryl Barnett
She was a nurse at Kaiser Hospital in 1955 when the hospital was on the old Kaiser steel mill site.
Age: 80
Resident: Riverside since 1954.
Education: Earned her doctorate in nursing from the University of Texas in Austin .
Hobbies: Grows orchids, bonsai trees and other flowering and ornamental plants.
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About the owner: Joshua Blevins, 23, began playing the violin at 12. Two years later, he began building his first violin during an apprenticeship in Hesperia. "There is very little that is more exciting than making your own instrument," Blevins said. It takes 200 hours to build, he said.