Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 255
Scan 255
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 241. See the scan on archive.org.
1unvarying regularity in the same degree and between the same points. The length of a Tourte bow is, as nearly as possible, 27 9/16 in. between the extreme thick end of the stick, exclusive of the button, and the inside of the head. For the sake of clearness, the following measurements are given, though somewhat roughly. Along 4 1/2 in. of the thick end, the stick never varies, but from that point, which is about 3/8 in. in diameter, there are a succession of ever lessening dimensions, until the diameter decreases to about 1/8 in. at the head, and this in the most regular and imperceptible manner. Although Vuillaume had himself seen Tourte cut up the billets of Pernambuco wood, so as to get the grain straight and its figure or curl in the proper direction, he does not appear to have penetrated the secret—if there was one—by which Tourte varied his dimensions, but he formulated a very ingenious method by means of which these thicknesses and their various positions may be obtained. Taking the whole length of the stick given above as a straight line, he raised at one end a perpendicular equal to the length of that portion of the thick end which remains constant in its dimensions, viz., about 4 1/2 in., and, at the other end, another perpendicular equal to about the height of the head, viz., about 7/8 in. He then joined these two perpendiculars at their extremities by a second straight line, and, taking a pair of compasses and the 4 1/2 in. perpendicular as a radius, he described a segment of a circle downward, cutting from the first straight line in this way a portion equal in length to the first perpendicular or radius. From this last point of intersection he raised another perpendicular meeting the straight
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