Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 158
Scan 158
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN STRINGS
3best fiddle, bow, and strings that he can. This ought he to do, and not to leave the others undone.
5There is no reason to suppose that any advance in the manufacture of gut-strings has been made since the seventeenth century. Even a work by Le Roy, dated 1570, gives the best recipe yet known for the detection of false strings.
7"It is needful," he says, "to prove them between the hands in the manner set forth in the figure" (which we reproduce); and he goes on to explain what everybody now knows—that if two lines only appear, the string is true; if more, false. But he fails to add that such a rough test only holds good for the thinner and simpler woven cords. In Doni's book (1647) we find such subtleties as these: "There are many particulars relating to the construction of instruments which are unknown to modern artificers, as, namely, that the best strings are made when the north (and the worst when the south) wind blows"—a suggestive hint relating to the acknowledged importance of atmospheric, perhaps magnetic, and at any rate climatic, conditions.
9How do we make our strings?
11Putting aside mature sheep and goats, we kill our young Italian lamb in September. We open him at once, and take the intestine whilst still warm; stretch it on an inclined plane; scrape it and clean it thoroughly without delay. We then steep it for about fifteen hours in cold water, with a little carbonate of soda, and then substitute tepid water for a few hours more.
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