I will gladly share with you the process i have used. It might be a starting point for anyone. Unwillingness to spend money so many times led to great discoveries!.. For me a difficult point to begin with, was to get a smooth string in the end. While gut string can be polished and the short filaments stay locked in, with the resulting smooth surface, silk filament are harder and will protrude, making for a hairy appearance. I am not sure by the way, if a loaded gut string is not suffering from the same problem?.. Here is the most successful technique i could come up with.
I used raw silk - continuous filament silk which has fibroin and sericin in it. There were a few suppliers in the UK, for example http://www.gaddum.co.uk/silk/silk-yarns/ , you can see 100% Filament Raw Silk, available in 20/22D, that would be the one. A good starting point would be about 300 filaments of 20/22Denier - a goal being some third or fourth off-the neck bass string. On refinement other strings can be calculated accordingly. These 300 filaments of raw silk (of a proper length, let's say 170 cm) are tied at the ends, so that you have a nice parallel filaments that can be twisted in the end. Now this silk has to be degummed - the sericin needs to be removed. I done this using soda ash with a mild soap - not too much of either, just so that the mixture starts feeling slippery between your fingers, but not slimy. (the same supplier probably has a proper degumming mix). Use a pot large enough to suspend the silk from some sort of a stick- the goal being that all of the silk in loose form gets cooked. After 40 -45 minutes near boiling temperature, with a gentle moving about, rinse the silk well, possibly wash once more with a mild soap, and finally rinse with distilled water, to avoid extra minerals. All this has to be done with a smooth skin hands, rubber gloves did not work for me. Tiniest filaments start trying to hair out, and the fewer are caught on the skin, the better. This bunch of silk can be soaked in the mixture of the salt right at this point. It will need to be gently moved around, to ensure a good contact. I found a temperature about 40C to be well manageable. At higher temperatures the rate of swelling seems less predictable. For cinnabar about 45 minutes is a good starting point. As we are standing near the pot, let me tell you were i found the cinnabar. I simply went to the Kremer Pigmente, which has stores all over the Europe and in NYC. There might be a cheaper source, as cinnabar actually is not such a rare mineral. Now, starting from this particular process i used heavy rubber gloves, for obvious reasons. Getting silk out of the pot, put it onto some paper towels, to soak out water while leaving the salts in. This is a good moment to attach two small hooks to the ends of the filaments and carefully align the filaments again, while doing this. Now we need a glue that will hold the string together. I like the agar-agar mixed with sea salt, to provide flexibility. Sturgeon glue with a drop of honey has good qualities, too. Hang the string between two points and carefully work the glue in. After it is well spread, start twisting the string. Between a few twists you might want to run (carefully) your fingers over the string, to make sure the filaments align well. Twist to a desired degree, certainly so that at a reasonable tension, the string does not bunch into ugly bumps. Hang some weights (stretch) and let it dry overnight. At this point, if not totally successful, the string might have some uneven spots, due to filaments lying unevenly. Take the cinnabar pigment and mix with some more of the same glue, a bit heavier then the initial mix. Paint your string. Here is the work for an artist! An improvised dye, made of a loop of wire, could insure an even diameter all through the string. I think, also a good quality oil paint can be used. Just be aware of the drying times. A good varnish, based on oil-resin-accelerator will seal in the job. Easy enough. Definitely easier then working with gut. I should mention, that on discussing this matter with a professional silk thread dyer, he offered to do the whole process, as he does it every day anyway, safe for the final glueing and twisting. This sort of cooperation might be a better way? I do not know anything about the gut wetting. Also, i don't think you can provide enough loading just by painting the outside of the gut. However, i could be mistaken. alexander On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:36:54 +0000 (GMT) Martyn Hodgson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Alexandar and Anthony, > > I find this correspondance very interesting since I'm considering > wether I can possibly afford to string all my lutes with Mimmo's new > loaded gut but am being equivocal due to the high cost: ie > many A-L-100s. The possibility of do-it-yourself loading to result in a > roughly comparable product is therefore very attractive: I presume one > can obtain the copper salt almost anywhere but where can one obtain the > plain silk strings? > > You mention mercuriuc sulphate as cinnabar (are they the same?): > obviously the reluctance of Mimmo and others to use mercury or its > compounds is the high risk of health damage - is mercuric > sulphate/cinnabar inert? > > Finally, accepting that processed gut is difficult/impossible(?) to > load effectively is there a (simple) way to encourage it to take on > loading. I recall many years ago someone mentioning a 'wetting' agent > which didn't cause gut to sweel but enable processed gut to be > processed more - any thoughts? > > Martyn To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
