I see that I have just achieved my long overdue 15 minutes of fame! Anyway, yes, clean saliva is usually perfectly fine, but roll a wad of soft cotton onto a thin swab stick so that it is long and elongate, not short and stubby, and only lightly moisten it. Then gently roll it over the soiled area of the soundboard. Warning: one some lutes it can remove some of the finish. I recently removed some dirt from one of my Tomlinson lutes and discovered that some of the varnish finish was removed when the area dried. However, I replaced some varnish into that area and all was ok afterwards. I am very fastidious with my lutes and also clean the dirt from the fingerboards and even on the backside of the neck, as well as the body fret area and where the right arm touches the bottom of the lute. There is a "synthetic saliva" formula consisting of triammonium citrate that can also be used, but I still prefer my own mouth moisture. "Spit" cleanings are commonly and routinely done to clean unvarnished paintings (amazing how much dirt accumulates on the surfaces of paintings in clean museum environments just from the visitor traffic bringing in dirt from the street outside!) and are often done as a preliminary step before varnish removal from varnished paintings. These days, however, I use the triammonium citrate solution on paintings and sometimes a solution even more potent. Kenneth Be In a message dated 11/1/2006 4:30:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
That suggestion usually shocks some people. But it was from Kenneth Be, a conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts. They actually use spit to clean the grime of centuries from paintings by the old masters. So he uses spit also to clean his lutes. But perhaps he can explain more. ==ajn -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
