Dear David and David,
Another line of research considers treating the
soundboard with chemicals. I noticed this New Scientist article
(which you may well know) and which claims a strad's sound could be
partly due to treatment with wood preservative, against fungal and
insect attack.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10686
"A wood preservation technique was probably responsible for the
exquisite sound produced by violins of the 17th-century Italian
instrument makers Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri.
"Along with colleagues from Colorado State University, US, and
Brigham Young University in Utah, US, Navygary found that a chemical
wood preservative used in timber yards around Cremona in Lombardy,
where both violin makers worked, appears to have given the violins
their signature sound quality."
"The violin backs appear to have been brutally treated with salts of
copper, iron and chromium as wood preservers," Nagyvary says.
It is these salts, he suggests, that provided the mellifluous tone.
Some metal ions like copper have powerful fungicidal properties,
which is why they were used to treat the wood. But these salts may
also have altered the mechanical and acoustical properties of each
instrument. Nagyvary now plans to find out exactly which salts were
used."
The question might be whether the intention was originally to improve
the sound, or whether this was a chance result of a treatment for
preservation. However, even if this was originally the case, luthiers
may have noticed this secondary effect.
Indeed, while I was ordering some Venice strings for my new lute,
Mimmo Peruffo told me that Bernard de Palissy (famous for applying
lead oxide based enamels to ceramics), had already written, in a
Treatise on salts, in1580 that... '' salts improve the voice of all
sorts of musical instruments' (This book was first mentioned in the
FOMRHI bulletin some years ago)
Mimmo, who is a chemist as well as a string maker, has been following
this thread and it reminded him that some ten years ago, he had been
involved experiments on applying some salt treatments to spruce
soundboards (following the results of chemical analyses on the
soundboard of a Guarneri instrument).
The result was approximately as follows:
1) the wood becomes harder and just a bit denser (loaded wood!) so
the thickness can be less than with natural wood. This gives very
good results for the sound
2) the sound wave propogation speed increases to reach that of
carbon fibre along the grain (an improvement from 5,400 mt/sec to
6,350 mt/sec about) in the other direction it improves just a little
less.
3) The salt solution replaces the insoluble substances that are in
the cellular structures such as pectines, sugars etc which became
solubles (becoming like soap and so they are expelled from the wood).
All these substances act as dampers for the sound. The open cellular
cells will be filled by the salt.
(I suppose drying a piece of wood could also result in reducing this
damping factor).
4) The colour became like that of cane-sugar (i.e. there is no
contradiction with what old paintings of instruments show. Even new
lute soundboards appear more brown than yellow in 17th century
paintings).
5) After treatment the wood is as stable as stone, and is never
attacked by worms.
Mimmo says he had several instruments made from this treated wood,
and the sound was just great.
Of course he considers this as a further piece of evidence that the
old ones were experimenting with metal oxides in relation to musical
instruments. These have survived and can afford the proof of such
experimentation, while strings of course usually disintegrate. We do
know that such treatment was given to leathers, and silks, to give
them weight, colour, or to preserve them, and now we know the same
was true of instrument wood, so it seems unlikely that this was never
tried on gut.
I found these references to similar work by Professor Nagyvary, who
experimented both with wood emersed in brine, but also in Borax "in
the manner of Stradivari, who used it to prevent infestation"
http://tinyurl.com/62juy9
> Research by biochemist Joseph Nagyvary discovered that
> Stradivari and Guarneri violin wood had been treated with a
> mixture rich in borax. Borax acts as a cross-linking agent,
> binding different molecules together with a gelatinous web and
> filling tiny pores in the wood (Borax Pioneer, 2002)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nagyvary
IN 2003, Nagyvary produced violins according to that method and they
were judged somewhere near the quality of a Stradivari.
Anthony
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 4 nov. 08 à 23:09, David van Ooijen a écrit :
>
>>> entering the question of ageing, and whether pre-aged wood,
>>> before an
>>> instrument has been built, gives the same result as can be
>>> obtained by
>>> buying a very old instrument.
>>
>> A maker here in Holland used radiation to age wood. Apparently if you
>> leave it long enough under X-ray (or whatever, I don't know about
>> these things) it ages faster, a lot faster. Like some makers use UV
>> (?) light to quicken up the drying of wood. The joke was that the
>> violin - as was the case - was prehistoric. Cannot tell you about the
>> results, haven't heard it.
>>
>> About breaking in instruments. I found some to be ready to go from
>> the
>> start, but improving over years nonetheless. Others needed some
>> months
>> to open up and are stable now, others again need breaking in every
>> time I've left them unplayed for some time. And some instruments need
>> 'serious' breaking in: loud playing, all positions, make the top
>> vibrate. Others need a more gentle touch to make every note shine and
>> sing. And the easy instruments do it all by themselves; just play
>> them, they are good from the start but improve over time, whether I
>> play them a lot or not, and what or however I play on them. I suppose
>> this goes for horses too.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> --
>> *******************************
>> David van Ooijen
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> www.davidvanooijen.nl
>> *******************************
>>
>>
>>
>> To get on or off this list see list information at
>> http://www..cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
>
>
>
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