Balsam Ground?

[Berl Mendenhall]

My question is what is a balsam ground? Are these ground systems made from the Balsam Fir tree resins or resins from others plants/trees? Joe Robson has a balsam ground system that looks very nice.  I’m not looking for any guarded secrets here. I’m sure there is a million different ways to make the stuff. I saw it mentioned several times in Mike’s thread on protein and was curious about what it is.

[JacksonMaberry]

Joe's system is an example of a balsam ground, but in a nutshell it's any ground that wets and sizes wood surfaces using the resin from a plant. This could be resin in solvent (eg larch in spirits of turpentine), for example. 

[Berl Mendenhall]

2 hours ago, JacksonMaberry said:

Joe's system is an example of a balsam ground, but in a nutshell it's any ground that wets and sizes wood surfaces using the resin from a plant. This could be resin in solvent (eg larch in spirits of turpentine), for example. 

Thank you Jackson. I did some reading this evening and remember some discussions several years ago about rosin oil used as a ground, Take this with a grain of salt,  but I “THINK”  I remember, real rosin oil is a thick substance left in the distilling process of making turpentine. There are some products marketed as rosin oil that are colophony mixed with spirits of turpentine (not a true rosin oil). I think this would qualify as a balsam ground if it hardened properly. I believe that idea was poo pooed on here. 

[JacksonMaberry]

Berl, yes rosin oil is a name for Tall oil, leftovers from the Kraft process of paper pulp manufacture and has many industrial uses. Like you pointed out, it doesn't really dry, and so in my opinion it's not a good candidate for our work. You really just want something with good wetting on wood surfaces that dries and has a refractive index close to that of wood. So shellac in ethanol is a good candidate, actually. It's an animal resin rather than a balsam, technically. Most resins in turpentine or ethanol are ok. 

[MikeC]

I once did some test samples using Hawthorn venice turpentine which is not real venice turpentine it's just some kind of rosin dissolved in turpentine.  It smells wonderful!  and looks good in the wood.   

[David Beard]

6 hours ago, Berl Mendenhall said:

My question is what is a balsam ground? Are these ground systems made from the Balsam Fir tree resins or resins from others plants/trees? Joe Robson has a balsam ground system that looks very nice.  I’m not looking for any guarded secrets here. I’m sure there is a million different ways to make the stuff. I saw it mentioned several times in Mike’s thread on protein and was curious about what it is.

Balsaams are conifer tree saps, the stuff rosin and amber come from.

Sappy flowing balsaams are cooked to make them into hard rosins by mostly driving off the volatile components.  To rosin as a ground, you first reliquify it with solvents.

If someone says 'balsaam' ground, presumably they didn't cook the sap all the way into a hard rosin first.

 

[Berl Mendenhall]

Thank you guys.

I currently use Plaster of Paris. I’m a fan of it, it seals the grain off really well.

Just a quick side note.
 I have some curly maple pieces that are arched that I use for varnish experiments, I have three or four that were varnished. I decided I would strip them so I could use them again. I used paint and varnish remover to take the varnish off. The varnish I use to seal off the p/o/p from the colored layers of varnish was still in the surface off the wood grain. It actually looked pretty good, it had the surface sealed well. This stuff will stay in the surface of wood grain forever. I decided to scrape everything down to the bare wood. If you wonder weather p/o/p really works just try scraping it off. It will ruin the edge on a scraper fast, I had to resharpen the edge several times before I got it down to bare wood again.

[Don Noon]

17 hours ago, JacksonMaberry said:

in a nutshell it's any ground that wets and sizes wood surfaces using the resin from a plant.

That excludes shellac, casein, and hide glue... but still leaves infinite combinations of resins and solvents and oils.

And then you can do stuff like put on plaster/water, and then coat it with balsam ground.  Infinite times infinite.

[James M. Jones]

Hi Berl , 

Ive had some success with balsam fir pitch , the tree with pitch blisters, after cooking down the resin slowly to a solid rosin , then dissolve in alcohol as a carrier . Seemed to come out nice , as Don points out there are infinite variations.  

[Berl Mendenhall]

3 hours ago, Don Noon said:

That excludes shellac, casein, and hide glue... but still leaves infinite combinations of resins and solvents and oils.

And then you can do stuff like put on plaster/water, and then coat it with balsam ground.  Infinite times infinite.

I couldn’t agree more Don. We could play around with different stuff for ever and never get it exactly the way the early masters did it. We probably wouldn’t know if we did get right. I do love talking about and messing with ground and varnish stuff. Mystery and romance.

[Don Noon]

1 hour ago, Berl Mendenhall said:

We could play around with different stuff for ever and never get it exactly the way the early masters did it. We probably wouldn’t know if we did get right.

Even if we DID get it right, it wouldn't look the same.  I think 300 years does a lot of things to orgainic stuff like wood and varnish, and too often that is overlooked.

[Don Noon]

2 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

I think 300 years does a lot of things to orgainic stuff like wood and varnish, and too often that is overlooked.

If you could clone Stradivarius, the baby wouldn't look like the original does now.

[David Beard]

39 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

Even if we DID get it right, it wouldn't look the same.  I think 300 years does a lot of things to orgainic stuff like wood and varnish, and too often that is overlooked.

Yes, but/and.

300 years didn't help Strad land at the top of the heap in his day, against competing Amati family instruments some of which had 150 years on him.

300 years does something.  It does not put Strad or Del Gusu ahead of 'filius', Rogeri, Amati family, or Klotz. It doesn't explain why Vuillaume couldn't and hasn't pulled ahead of Strad.

300 years does something.  And it's dangerous to hide behind that idea.

[JacksonMaberry]

15 minutes ago, David Beard said:

Yes, but/and.

300 years didn't help Strad land at the top of the heap in his day, against competing Amati family instruments some of which had 150 years on him.

300 years does something.  It does not put Strad or Del Gusu ahead of 'filius', Rogeri, Amati family, or Klotz. It doesn't explain why Vuillaume couldn't and hasn't pulled ahead of Strad.

300 years does something.  And it's dangerous to hide behind that idea.

Stainer was more in demand during Strads lifetime among professional musicians, but your overall point is a good one.

[Davide Sora]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

Even if we DID get it right, it wouldn't look the same.  I think 300 years does a lot of things to orgainic stuff like wood and varnish, and too often that is overlooked.

 

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

If you could clone Stradivarius, the baby wouldn't look like the original does now.

I completely agree.

[David Beard]

38 minutes ago, JacksonMaberry said:

Stainer was more in demand during Strads lifetime among professional musicians, but your overall point is a good one.

I'm not sure how extensive this was.  I believe most of the evidence is German and English. 

It seems Italian Baroque musicians like Corelli and Tartini favored Italian and Cremona instruments from early on.   And this spread fairly rapidly.   When Beethoven was gifted a quartet, it was a quartet of Italian/Cremona instruments.

 

[JacksonMaberry]

30 minutes ago, David Beard said:

I'm not sure how extensive this was.  I believe most of the evidence is German and English. 

It seems Italian Baroque musicians like Corelli and Tartini favored Italian and Cremona instruments from early on.   And this spread fairly rapidly.   When Beethoven was gifted a quartet, it was a quartet of Italian/Cremona instruments.

 

Beethoven is too late to be important to the central idea that Strad was not the most sought after in his own time. Corelli and Tartini are, however. Charles Beare's article on the influence of Stainer is worth reading if you haven't yet. Not trying to diminish Strad, and it's a fact that he and DG have long since eclipsed Stainer in importance, but during their lifetimes, they were playing second fiddle and I find that interesting as a curiosity. 

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, David Beard said:

300 years does something.  And it's dangerous to hide behind that idea.

And doomed to frustration if you ignore it. 

There's a seeming holy grail of discovering exactly what Strad used, and (as I see it) a fantasy that  if we just have that, then we can make violins that look exactly like Strad's. (Oh... and also there's the religion that Strad's varnish is the pinnacle of aesthetic perfection).  

I'm not trying to insult Strad; in fact I very much admire his skill with wood and varnish.  I'm just trying to be more realistic about it, and not bound rigidly to historical materials and methods.

[Berl Mendenhall]

Don’t know a thing about Stainers sounded, but his craftsmanship was second to none. I had the pleasure of seeing two different Stainers, both were in remarkable shape. They were probably more of a collector’s instrument than a musician’s instrument. 

[scordatura]

This really comes down to the sound and playability that you want. I recently played some Nicolo Amatis (small and grand pattern) that were wonderful for solo Bach but could not handle romantic repertoire. It’s the model people.

[David Beard]

2 hours ago, Don Noon said:

And doomed to frustration if you ignore it. 

There's a seeming holy grail of discovering exactly what Strad used, and (as I see it) a fantasy that  if we just have that, then we can make violins that look exactly like Strad's. (Oh... and also there's the religion that Strad's varnish is the pinnacle of aesthetic perfection).  

I'm not trying to insult Strad; in fact I very much admire his skill with wood and varnish.  I'm just trying to be more realistic about it, and not bound rigidly to historical materials and methods.

I suspect we both very much agree on this.   The age factor complicates things.  And there is danger both in ignoring it, and in overly turning to it.

 

Personally, I strongly doubt there even was a fixed exact finishing procedure, but more likely just working principles.  And, I doubt there were exactly fixed ingredients generally.  More likely categories of materials with a bit of 'mix and match' range to the categories.

[joerobson]

True.  Balsams are just the raw resinous material that the tree exudes to heal a wound.  The issue with working these materials ,raw, as Ground is that most of them take forever to actually dry.  If the material is not dry there are varnish issues.  Whether or not there are acoustic issues is for others to assess.

My job was to reconstitute the material into a usable tool ie. on that drys.

on we go,

Joe

On 3/15/2022 at 9:09 PM, David Beard said:

Balsaams are conifer tree saps, the stuff rosin and amber come from.

Sappy flowing balsaams are cooked to make them into hard rosins by mostly driving off the volatile components.  To rosin as a ground, you first reliquify it with solvents.

If someone says 'balsaam' ground, presumably they didn't cook the sap all the way into a hard rosin first.

 

[David Beard]

19 minutes ago, joerobson said:

True.  Balsams are just the raw resinous material that the tree exudes to heal a wound.  The issue with working these materials ,raw, as Ground is that most of them take forever to actually dry.  If the material is not dry there are varnish issues.  Whether or not there are acoustic issues is for others to assess.

My job was to reconstitute the material into a usable tool ie. on that drys.

on we go,

Joe

I assume that means a partial or full cook into a rosin, then reliquification with solvent.   

[joerobson]

32 minutes ago, David Beard said:

I assume that means a partial or full cook into a rosin, then reliquification with solvent.   

The raw Balsam is treated with solvents and minor heating to divide it.  It retains the physical and chemical attributes of the original material.  Reconstituted they actually dry.

[Michael_Molnar]

On 3/16/2022 at 3:43 PM, Don Noon said:

If you could clone Stradivarius, the baby wouldn't look like the original does now.

Right.