I tried the chipbreaker trick...

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks George, I will keep that in mind for my French polishing experiments

Ah, Florence, brings back very good memories.

I understand there to be quite a bit of debate around the varnishes that were used by the old masters created and applied to their violins.

[Jim Koepke]

I understand there to be quite a bit of debate around the varnishes that were used by the old masters created and applied to their violins.

Everything else looked the same so the magic must have been in the varnish, no?

jtk

[george wilson]

Fact was,everyone in that area of Italy used the SAME varnish. The only one outside the area who also used the same varnish was Jacob Stainer in Austria(or was it Germany?). But,he had lived and worked in Italy in his younger years.

It is possible that the exact flax plants friom which the oil might have been pressed,has become extinct,as have so many plants now used for food or industrially. No one knows what was really in the varnish. But,it was commonly available at the time.

[Mike Holbrook]

Yesterday was George's birthday! happy birthday George! This getting older can be a challenge that even our OCD natures have problems working around ;-)

I think I may be among the OCD posters, although far from the experience level of many others. It does seem to me that different posters may have very different needs/likes/preferences/work that precipitate some of the more heated debates.

I got interested in green woodworking which places a different slant on things. Lately the wife and I have been making a concerted effort to downsize, practically everything. Part of the downsize will probably entail moving to a smaller, simpler, more rustic home, which has been moving me even further towards more rustic designs. Where many posters here are interested in the smoothest surfaces possible, I have become more & more interested in textured surfaces. I have been working on smoothing planes recently and trying to figure out if/what kind of/ what cutting angles....smooth plane would be appropriate for me. It is hard to follow very specific needs/paths in long posts, which I think may cause frustration and ill will at times. Any form of communication, and certainly written forums, have limitations in their ability to portray posters exact thoughts, especially as those thoughts become more detailed. The entire "chipbreaker trick" issue may be the ultimate exzmple.

[Brian Holcombe]

George,

Thats makes a lot of sense that the plants would now be extinct, making it impossible to duplicate. There is so much lore around the top makers but it also makes more sense that the varnish would have been common to the area.

I find the topic intriguing, along with speculation on how the ideal tones were created. It's somewhat lost on me, not being an instrument maker, but I still find it interesting.

[Prashun Patel]

George,

That makes a lot of sense that the plants would now be extinct, making it impossible to duplicate.

I doubt the plants are extinct. Finishes have changed because of chemical technology which rendered older finishes either inferior or economically not feasible to keep creating.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

This is another one of those issues that simply cannot be empirically proven, but I certainly think it is possible for the plants to be extinct.

I remember when I was a kid my grandparents had a type of squash that they particularly liked. You could not buy the seeds anywhere, it was a hybrid variety that grew in their garden and nowhere else. Every year they saved seeds for the next year. After my grandmother died, nobody kept that up, and while you can obviously find squash, that particular variety is no longer in existence. In agriculture, new varieties tend to displace older breeds. Some older breeds survive (the Belted Galloway or the Texas Longhorn for example). Others are simply forgotten and die out.

[george wilson]

The World has been "standardizing" plants we eat so that only a small portion of once used food plants are available. This may have also happened to things like flax plants.

Efforts have been made to safeguard seeds of plants that are no longer commercially used. This is why we have those "seed banks" that are located in the far North.

I have no proof that flax plants once used are now not grown. Or even proof that linseed oil was the oil used in the "Cremona" varnish. But,in my many years in public,I was visiter by biologists ,chemists,and all sorts of people that were interested in the mystery of this varnish,which it seems that every builder in the region used. Some did put forth the hypothesis that the particular plants that yielded drying oils,such as flax plants, might not now be in use.

Some of them elaborated on the very large number of plants that are just no longer grown because standardization of things like food plants has made agriculture more efficient(if not as interesting).

[Jim Koepke]

This is another one of those issues that simply cannot be empirically proven, but I certainly think it is possible for the plants to be extinct.

Dr. Google indicates a lot of extinct plants.

As does Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_plants

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

George,

Thats makes a lot of sense that the plants would now be extinct, making it impossible to duplicate. There is so much lore around the top makers but it also makes more sense that the varnish would have been common to the area.

I find the topic intriguing, along with speculation on how the ideal tones were created. It's somewhat lost on me, not being an instrument maker, but I still find it interesting.

I was/am a cellist so I have some interest in this one. My (admittedly very incomplete) understanding is the same as what George said: Before modern analytical methods there was a widespread assumption that at least some of the difference between contemporaneous makers was in the varnish. That assumption has been largely invalidated.

EDIT: Dr-my-employer-that-does-search says Stainer was from present-day Austria (Austria's borders have changed quite a bit over the centuries, so one must be careful to differentiate).

[Mel Fulks]

The different plant thing is interesting and will at some point,no doubt, will be funded and studied. My guess is that the oil from a slightly different plant would be no different . Few plants are really eradicated even when a lot of money is spent in that effort. Just as they are "back breeding " animals maybe they will do same thing with plants. Since dna some plants have been entirely reclassified. The official names were way off. But in regard to the varnish I think the containers for oil would be studied first; I mean ,I don't think they were stainless steel or plastic.

[george wilson]

Dangerous assumption about oils being the same. They can have very different optical qualities. So can resins as well. There is just no way of analyzing the old varnish. All you're going to get is that they are made of hydrocarbons.

Another thing is how you USE the oil. Dutch painters made their paintings extra beautiful by use of stand oil,which is just oxygen thickened linseed oil. But,is it JUST?

I am sure the different plant thing HAS been studied. That is why they have millions of seeds from no longer grown plants in the seed banks. But,no one to my knowledge has grown big fields full of defunct flax to press out the oil,and make experimental varnishes from it.

In reality,the only remaining original varnish on just about ALL Strads is a little bit in the bottoms of the "gutters" around the edges,where the purfling is. There are very few varnish intact survivors.

Stradivari put spirit varnish rich in color over oil based undercoats. The spirit varnish did not stick very well,and has chipped off in high wear areas,creating a mottled effect that some find quite beautiful. But,in reality applying spirit over oil was a mistake originally.

Old varnishes were kept in ceramic containers with lids tied on. Artist's oil paints were sold in pig bladders tied shut. You poked a hole in them and inserted wood plugs when you were done with them for the day. Must have been a HUGE PAIN keeping them from drying out,or getting at the paint without a big mess. The GOOD artists made their own paints and ground their own pigments.

One of the oddball "tools" I made were watercolor brushes for the Geddy house,where they taught little classes to kids about water coloring. They had ferrules made from feather quills tied on with wire to the wooden handles. I made birdies for them,too,and the badminton rackets they used. I always felt that Williamsburg ought to make the museum more interesting for kids. Good for business. Made them stilts,too.

[Mel Fulks]

I told you they didn't use steel or plastic! ...It would be relatively simple to make oil from from different kinds of flax and compare them as oil and later as varnish.

[george wilson]

How many kinds of flax oil are available. I mean made from different varieties of flax?

[Mel Fulks]

I have no idea,that's what I meant about someone getting a grant at some point. Not saying they would make some major discovery but it would at least address the question of whether or not different kinds of flax plants make oils with enough differences to make it reasonable to think the same kind of flax is needed as what was used earlier. If it was determined that they all made varnishes of equal quality then the possibility of a special lost oil could be put aside.