NOEL Burke bends over his work-bench, the skill of generations in each touch of knife to wood. His clients - among the first violinist in the Vienna chamber orchestra, a cellist from Helsinki, and another from the San Francisco symphony orchestra depend utterly on his craftsmanship.

At 31, the Westport-based bow-maker is working to establish a world reputation: he was the first bow-maker to be awarded three gold medals at the Violin Society of America International Bow-Making Awards, in 1994, an achievement he repeated in 1996. He makes bows for violins, violas and cellos.

Burke grew up in London, and spent his holidays in Dromore West, Sligo, his father's birthplace.

"There were always Irish musicians in the house," he remembers. "I have a vivid memory of my father bringing me to visit Tony Martin, the violin maker, in London. I remember him showing me his tools in his workshop and telling me all about fiddle making."

He began by making flutes, on a three-year course at Newark Technical College in Nottingham. "There was a violin-making school next to the woodwind school and that kept alive my interest in violins," he says. "By the time I had finished college I realised there was no living to be made in flute making and it wasn't really the kind of work I wanted, because it involved too much metal. I wanted to work with wood."

Fortune smiled, and at a wedding in Paris he met two French bow makers, Stephane Thomachot and Charles Espey. "Charles invited me to visit them in Stephane's workshop and I spent a week in Paris watching them working and asking questions. Just before I left, Charles said, `If ever you want to learn how to do this, I will teach you'.

"I spent two and a half years making furniture on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, but all the time Charles Espey's offer was in the back of my mind."

Espey was living in Seattle, so Noel drove up to see him, a bag of clothes in the back of the car: "I sold my car to get some money and I worked with Charles for 10 months. I would work for him for the first half of the day and then in the afternoon he was at my beck and call. He made a demonstration bow for me, step by step. Then I would go away to my bench and try to do it. After three months I had made my first bow.

Espey's bow making was in the French tradition, completely hand-made. The French were and still are the only bow-makers who train to make bows entirely by hand.

"I will teach someone myself some day," Burke says, "when I find the right person.

He went on to Paris, to work with Stephane Thomachot, "the most successful bowmaker around today".

"I worked with him for two years and that really was where I learned about bow making. For the next three years I worked in my apartment and sold my bows to violin shops. I got the odd order from a musician but I was selling mostly to shops. Now, it's 50/50 and the ideal is to stop making for shops altogether, which is just a question of time and reputation."

It takes about two weeks to make a bow.

The red wood that is used is pernambuco, after the region in Brazil from which it originally came. The tree is called pao brasil and as it was Brazil's only export in the days before the coffee plantations - the Brazilians named their country after it. Pernambuco is scarce, and expensive. "I am now trying to find enough pernambuco to last my lifetime," he says. "In order to make the best bows, you have to use the best materials" - and for the best materials you have to be prepared to travel. When he needs pernambuco, he goes to France, Germany or America to select the pieces he wants.

He cuts sticks for bows from a board, and leaves them to dry for at least three years. "You can hear and feel when the slick is ready to be worked on, but I still write the date on them when I cut them.

"The stick is cut a millimetre too big all round. Then, I heat it and bend it over the corner of the bench. I put a curve in it and leave it to cool down. Then I grab both ends of it, hold it up to my eye and flex it equally with both hands. It should come up perfectly straight. In other words, I am imitating the hair."

The tip plate at the head of the bow is made from ebony and mastodon. The ebony comes from Madagascar and has to be left to dry for at least two years. The mastodon comes from the extinct, 10,000 year old, elephant-like animal of the same name: the material is dug up in Siberia and is a legal alternative to ivory.

The "frog", at the other end, which holds the hair, is made from ebony, silver and the shell of the abalone, a mollusc found off the coast of America.

The best hair for the bow comes from Mongolian horses.

The workshop holds a long bench with a neat row of assorted, small chisels, tweezers and knives. Noel makes his own tools, grinding down old chisels. "The old steel is the best," he says, fingering a knife made from a cut-throat razor.

Before settling in Westport, Burke lived in Cremona, a small provincial town in the north of Italy - and the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari. Out of a population of about 50,000, there were 150 violin makers but no French bow-makers.

"Cremoa wasn't as good a move as I had thought it would be," he muses. "There were no musicians there and I really missed them. So, I came to Dublin but workshop space was too expensive. Then a friend found this place," he says. "I have a north-facing window, so the light is really good for seeing the line of the stick.

"Everything has fallen into place perfectly."