Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 26
Scan 26
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 22. See the scan on archive.org.
1Gilbert Graham, chemist, Girvan, Ayrshire; Frank Devoney, 63 Milburn Street, Blackpool; Dr. Wm. Inglis Clark, of Messrs. Duncan & Flockhart, Chemists, 104 South Canongate, Edinburgh; and by Wm. Bradley, 63 Bowker Street, Manchester. There is also in existence a manuscript book dated 1660, once the property of an English earl, in which the recipe used by old Foster for making "oil amber varnish" according to the Italian method is clearly laid down, and this recipe is used by Mr. Caffyn. Mr. Bradley, with wonderful frankness, gives this as his own method of
3HOW TO MAKE AMBER VARNISH.
5"Get a long test tube, say 8 inches long, or a small hard glass flask with a long neck, from the chemist's, tie a piece of wire round the neck to form a handle, then, having broken up some amber—to be had at the pipemaker's—put in as much as will fill one-fourth of the vessel. Now, holding it by the wire handle, cautiously heat the flask over a gas flame till the amber froths up and finally melts into a brown, oily-looking fluid. Have ready some boiled linseed oil, heated in a separate vessel (two parts to one of amber) and gradually pour that into the melted amber. Keep the mixture quietly simmering for some time until a little taken out on a knitting wire, on being touched with the finger, can be drawn out like a thread. After allowing the varnish to cool a little, add one part of turpentine. The varnish is now made, and after subsidence can be used. It is of a brown colour, not very deep, but by a process, which I do not feel inclined to divulge, can be made any colour, from olive brown to ruby red—three coats being sufficient to give great depth. If the amber were placed in a shallow vessel, it would char and carbonise, but not melt. Of course, the method of making the varnish which I have given is only in a very small way to illustrate that amber can only be melted when the air is kept out by a heavy vapour of succinic acid—which is generated—or else in closed vessels at a high pressure, which comes to the same thing." Mr. Rathbone, writing to me, says—"The colouring of amber varnish is, as you say, only a matter of manipulation in the melting and mixing." Mr. Bradley, in the same strain, writes to me thus—"On the same day I compared a piece of wood varnished with my amber varnish with that on a genuine Strad, and could not
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