Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 115
Scan 115
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 97. See the scan on archive.org.
1inserted, will enable the operator to get enough purchase, or advantage may be taken of the juxtaposition of the cramp, and using both to gain the requisite pressure against the bend of the rib in the manner before mentioned.
3There are as a matter of course extremely numerous kinds of fractures or injuries arising from almost as many different causes. If time and space permitted, they might be classified and each credited to their different agencies. Sufficient for our purpose, however, will be the separation of them into three divisions: firstly, those which may be the outcome or result of ordinary wear and giving way of parts through atmospheric influence, such as damp or excessive dryness, or both at times, in combination with varying temperature. People are apt to debit the climate of Britain with many shortcomings and the cause of much undoing of good work in the fiddle world and the prevention of its being accomplished in the concluding stages of fiddle facture.
5Much of the good quality attached to Italian instruments has been attributed to the beautiful and dry air of Italy. Now that Italy has beautiful air no one can deny, that is, while not standing in the streets of some of the most interesting cities therein, but that it is dry generally is perhaps going beyond the mark; remember it is a very mountainous place with some exceptional portions, this may be easily verified by a glance over a good map of the place, or better, a tour by railway from the northern provinces down as far as Naples. Knowledge is fairly general as to mountainous districts, much more than plains, being the localities where rain is most frequent, the more or less saturation of the atmosphere following as a matter of course.
7But let Italian fiddles speak for themselves, otherwise than through the medium of gut strings. The first makers of violins in Brescia used no side linings, but trusted to the most excellent quality of their glue for holding back and front to the ribs. That their trust was not misplaced in many instances is proved by the work in its primitive condition remaining intact to the present
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