Books › The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904 › scan 66
Scan 66
The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1be gradations of absorption, constituting zones which will offer great or little resistance to the dislocating influence of vibration. If this assumption be well founded (the recorded facts seem to leave little room for doubt), it is not difficult to conceive what will happen. The wood which has received no accession of agglutinant from the varnish, after a comparatively brief period of use, will become permanently disqualified; this disposes of the innermost zone. Next we have to consider the zone which has received from the varnish the minimum quantity of agglutinating material; by constant vibration it may be supposed that this zone also, at a little later date, will become disintegrated, at least temporarily. A similar effect will ensue, after still longer endurance, in the zones with constantly increasing increments of varnish or resin (short of sufficient to constitute homogeneity), consequently with gradually augmented power of resistance to the dislocating influence. In this way, the effect of constant playing (continued vibration) must be to gradually diminish the thickness of the effective diaphragm.
3With rest (if a similar resumption of cohesion takes place within the wood as has been shown to ensue with the varnish on the surface), those zones, which have not entirely lost their power of recuperation (i.e., where the amount of resin is sufficient to allow of re-cohesion), will soon resume their original condition of resistance: the violin will regain its normal state of sonorousness and brilliancy.
5It seems impossible to conceive any other hypothesis which will satisfy all the conditions.
7Practical experiments have confirmed these theo-
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