Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 309
Scan 309
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 295. See the scan on archive.org.
1soft; the first three of the latter class being dry, and the remaining four supple. Hard resins give great solidity to a varnish, but employed alone on violins it would crack and scale off. The dry resins prevent the hard ones from scaling, and add brilliancy, but, used by themselves, they would fall into powder. The last four have no inherent solidity, but they communicate elasticity to the hard resins, and prevent those which are dry from powdering, thus affording to the other two classes the qualities in which they are deficient. Elasticity in a violin varnish is of primary importance, and the word has a peculiar signification in this respect. All varnishes have, in general, more or less of what is termed elasticity, but the reader has only to refer to the experiments performed by Savart with Chladni's figures to understand the kind of elasticity here in question. The throbbing sensation experienced on the floor of a flour mill, or on that of a railway train in rapid motion, is, if coarser, somewhat analogous to the more imperceptible and intense vibration of a violin, and the elasticity required in a violin varnish has relation to that kind of motion, and not to any other.
3Solidity is the quality next in importance, and, for purposes of ornamentation, transparency and brilliancy of colour follow. But the solidity yielded by the hard resins would be positively injurious, as before explained. All that is required is an amount sufficient to resist the handling and rubbing incident to the violin's use, combined with a minimum of exposure. Fiddles are not exposed to the air and the sun—at least, they ought not to be—but are kept, except while in use,
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.