Books › An Encyclopedia of the Violin, 1925 › scan 170
Scan 170
An Encyclopedia of the Violin, 1925
16 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 144. See the scan on archive.org.
1ing passage through the water, the strength of the alkaline solution is increased. This is continued until the liquid registers 16 on the salt-gauge, which corresponds to a little less than one and a half degrees of the aerometer degree. The guts are now sufficiently cleansed to be ready to be made into strings, but before anything else, they must first be sorted and, if necessary, split.
3Sorting the Membranes
5The sorting of the membranes calls for great skill. Hence, as a rule, it is only entrusted to workmen who are thoroughly experienced and know what is needed to make a good string. The guts, in fact, have to be classified according to their whiteness, their length, and their stretching or tension power, so that each will be used to make the kind of string for which it is best adapted. At least two lots of strings are made, one of them consisting of the thin guts which seem fit to be transformed into E strings (chanterelles) with three threads, while the other includes those only suited to making coarse strings. In both lots those guts which are approximately the same size, and those which are more or less colored, are laid aside.
7Splitting the Guts
9Since the guts, as we have already remarked, are not uniform in size, and since this circumstance adds to the trouble of preparing strings of a regular cylindrical form, this difficulty is avoided by splitting—that is to say, dividing—such guts lengthwise into long threads, using for the purpose a special knife with several blades, known as a soutil or subtle, from the Italian word sottile, meaning narrow, thin, slender. As the threads are obtained by the splitting process, they are placed in a jar, care being taken that their ends lie inversely, that is to say, the thick ends at one side and the thin ends at the other.
11There is a very simple way of telling whether a string has been made of a whole gut or of a split gut. All that is necessary is to dip an end of the string in question into a solution of tartaric or sulphuric acid. After a short immersion, the component parts of the string will separate. If the string has been made of a whole gut, the detached fragments will take the shape of small cylinders, which will not be the case if the string is made of a split gut.
13Twisting the Strings
15The twisting of the guts into violin strings is carried out by the aid of looms or frames which will carry about three lengths of violin string. The three strings are twisted at the same time, as a rule, a wheel with two hooks being necessary. These wheels are simple frames, about 66 centimeters (about 26") broad by 1 meter (3 1/12') long, one of whose ends is provided with
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