Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 43
Scan 43
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 29. See the scan on archive.org.
1provincial amateur or rough carpenter who would probably make matters worse. On setting to work after a preliminary inspection, the careful repairer will fit the parts together as they are, to ascertain that there is nothing to prevent a close join of the surfaces, sometimes a splinter will prevent a close fit of the surfaces; this must be pushed into its right position or, if in the interior, it may be better to remove it altogether. If the part is lost, then the bare space must be carefully examined and the direction of the grain and quality of the surrounding wood matched as closely as possible; otherwise the most accurate fitting and finishing off will not make a good restoration. The repairer of experience will have at hand a large quantity of odds and ends of different kinds of maple, curled or plain; perhaps old worn out necks or otherwise useless fragments of relics of a bygone age, and not necessarily of musical instruments. But sometimes these are not to be obtained, nothing but new or modern wood, and it may be of good appearance and applicable excepting for the colour. What is to be done? There is the drawback to new white wood, that it is difficult to colour down to match the surrounding wood, when it has been fixed, and besides, if the part happens to be where there is any friction, the white wood soon makes itself apparent, if not very conspicuous. It is advantageous, therefore, to colour the wood artificially before placing in position. There have been many ways adopted at times for meeting this requirement. It must be remembered, however, that there is no perfectly successful mode of artificially colouring wood so as to defy detection, but small portions such as are under consideration at the present moment may be treated so as to look tolerably well. Firstly, a well known, often tried, but very bad method is to steep a piece of white new wood in a solution of nitric acid and water. When dry, old age will seem to have crept over and through it, but of a delusive and unnatural kind. The corrosive properties of the acid still remain and gradually disintegrate the fibres until the whole mass becomes rotten. It may be fairly termed premature old
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