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Dampening agents....


Nick Allen

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43 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

It's difficult to add damping without adding some mass and stiffness which also affect the sound character.  If you just wanted to increase damping micro-cracking could produce this.

Water expands about 9% when it freezes which may stress the wood's structure enough to cause micro-cracking. Repeated soaking, freezing, thawing and drying of the wood might work.

One variation would be to soak the wood, freeze it and then use vacuum freeze drying to remove the water. I might try this on one of the violas I built.

 

"Acme Freeze Dried Viola" add water and stand clear. 

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1 hour ago, Claudio Rampini said:

I think that all kind of varnishes will be destroyed in an artificial aging, because the target is to verify the limits of the analyzed things.

No, the usual target is to quantify how it will age under certain conditions which are intended to be similar to various natural aging and wear processes but faster.

I know how this feels. 

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On 8/4/2024 at 1:05 PM, Don Noon said:

It seems to me that thicker plates tend to ring more than thinner ones, at least for top plates.  I'd guess that thinner plates would have the free plate mode shapes messed up more by the bass bar than if the plate was thicker.

These are just vaguely recalled things, and could be wrong.  I have even less recollection about top plates without a bass bar.

I think there is a relatively higher air damping factor on thinner plates. But I recall one Australian guitar maker did some damping tests of guitar boards and found that surface finish made a noticable difference. Plates which were sanded to thickness had noticably higher damping than planed plates. 

It might have been Trevor Gore but I can't remember. 

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1 hour ago, LCF said:

No, the usual target is to quantify how it will age under certain conditions which are intended to be similar to various natural aging and wear processes but faster.

I know how this feels. 

Similar or natural are not the same, perhaps you are describing an artificial antiquing method. Also, the UVbox is a way to aging the wood and the varnishes, but it's much less poweful and more controllable than the sun. What about the artificial "wear"? I never heard about this thing.

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44 minutes ago, Claudio Rampini said:

Similar or natural are not the same, perhaps you are describing an artificial antiquing method. Also, the UVbox is a way to aging the wood and the varnishes, but it's much less poweful and more controllable than the sun. What about the artificial "wear"? I never heard about this thing.

Wear testing (and similar) are common in product component design and verification. For example, a machine might be set up to turn a switch on and off a million times to see how well it holds up. There's a lot of this going on around here (Detroit), in connection with the automotive trade.

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17 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

:wub:
 

Regardless it seems that the history of those famed fiddles seems to defend 6 digit price tags. Or as a famous player put it: ‘My violin has seen Beethoven!’

That may be but another question is : has Beethoven seen it ?  One pet theory of mine is that we became used to a certain "voice color" and expect to keep hearing it for ever and ever. No need to agree with me, but I think it is a mistake. One surely would not like Mirella Freni in Liebestod. And certainly, Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven did not "hear" their quartets in "Cremonese colors".

Maybe we should learn be more flexible

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43 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Wear testing (and similar) are common in product component design and verification. For example, a machine might be set up to turn a switch on and off a million times to see how well it holds up. There's a lot of this going on around here (Detroit), in connection with the automotive trade.

I remember the Wöhler diagram, is this related to the violins?

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3 hours ago, Claudio Rampini said:

I remember the Wöhler diagram, is this related to the violins?

Testing can be related to Wohler principles, but is not necessarily. For example, a ball bearing of a certain design and constructed of the same metal alloys may fail under a certain set of conditions using one type of lubricant, but be fine using another lubricant. Another factor can be the amount of lubricant in the bearing. Too much lubricant in a high-speed bearing can generate excessive heat.
Testing of finishes may involve a specified number of hours of saltwater spray exposure at a certain film thickness. The whole point is finding out more about the durability of a product than by just "winging it", or by relying on what has been derived from just intuition, belief or blind faith.

I think such things can be quite applicable to violins. If you don't, when it comes to your own violins, I don't have much of a problem with that, as long as you disclose to your clients that it is up to them to do the testing. But if you are recommending that other makers not test their varnish theories, I'm a bit less "hunky-dory" with that.

(I'm pretty sure that "hunky-dory" is a historical latin idiom, because my ouija board told me so. :D)

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2 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I'm pretty sure that "hunky-dory" is a historical latin idiom,

Looks like mid-1800's American entertainers.  But they was a passel of great scholars so maybe they lifted it from the classics:

The Life and Times of Julius Ceasar (original pig latin edition),  Aius-Gay Uetonius-Say , ca. 1st C. AD

Utus-bray: 'Ow-hay ou-yay eelin'-fay Easar-Cay?'

Easar-Cay: 'Unky-hay ordi-day, uddy-bay!'

Easar-Cay: 'Ouch-yay!'

Utus-bray: 'Ow-hay about-yay ow-nay?'

Easar-Cay: 'Ot-nay o-say ood-gay......et-yay u-tay, Utus-bray?'

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2 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I think such things can be quite applicable to violins. If you don't, when it comes to your own violins, I don't have much of a problem with that, as long as you disclose to your clients that it is up to them to do the testing. But if you are recommending that other makers not test their varnish theories, I'm a bit less "hunky-dory" with that.

(I'm pretty sure that "hunky-dory" is a historical latin idiom, because my ouija board told me so. :D)

Thanks for the explanation, it's very interesting. My approach is different because I'm a humanist, because I think that is the man at the centre of the violinmaking.

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23 minutes ago, Claudio Rampini said:

Thanks for the explanation, it's very interesting. My approach is different because I'm a humanist, because I think that is the man at the centre of the violinmaking.

I am somewhat of a humanist, along with somewhat of an engineerist, and somewhat of a supreme being or intelligence underlying everything in the universe, believist.
Rather difficult to define me accurately by a single label or belief system, including those which are really polarized or totally binary, such as one belief or another being either totally right, or totally wrong.

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20 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Well, I have dried linseed oil several times and alone it forms a rubber like mass. 
 
In connection with resins this is a different story.

The only oil which seems to become ‘glass hard’ is Chinese tung oil but I don’t know how ‘glass hard’ it is because I never worked with it.

My two cents on tung oil vs linseed is that linseed is volatile and tung oil is not. So tung oil is a finish by itself. 

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2 hours ago, FiddleMkr said:

My two cents on tung oil vs linseed is that linseed is volatile and tung oil is not.

???? Lso doesn't go away when I boil it and it can be a finish by itself. 

 

You can shandy tung oil with lesser drying oils such as olive to end up with something which dries much like linseed. 

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, LCF said:

???? Lso doesn't go away when I boil it and it can be a finish by itself. 

 

You can shandy tung oil with lesser drying oils such as olive to end up with something which dries much like linseed. 

 

 

 

Thanks for the input. My experience is that linseed would evaporate out of the wood, at least the top layer. Raw had a slower evaporation rate than boiled and even boiled linseed took weeks, but still they both would dry out. 
     However there may be enough left to be a “finish” after it “dries out”. I finished a fiddle natural using just boiled linseed oil. I’ll have to re-examine the surface and compare it to raw wood. It’s been years (20?) and it will give an answer. 

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41 minutes ago, FiddleMkr said:

My experience is that linseed would evaporate out of the wood, at least the top layer.

I think "evaporate" is the wrong word. These oils will soak into unfinished wood to varying degrees. Once soaked into the wood, they can take a long time to "dry". Unless this first coat is thoroughly dry, subsequent coats can also soak into the wood, leaving little or none on the surface. That's where the oil is going (or is possibly being transferred to other objects which come in contact), as opposed to "evaporating".

Tung oil will more quickly and easily "dry" into a harder, varnish-like substance than linseed oil will. It will also darken less over time than most linseed oils.

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So, I think it's generally advised to avoid linseed oil in the wood to any significant degree, especially the spruce. 

But has anybody considered the minerals and metals found in cremonese tops may be causing some kind of desirable dampening characteristics? Like borax even? 

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1 hour ago, Nick Allen said:

So, I think it's generally advised to avoid linseed oil in the wood to any significant degree, especially the spruce. 

But has anybody considered the minerals and metals found in cremonese tops may be causing some kind of desirable dampening characteristics? Like borax even? 

The linseed oil is perfect for the neck, not for the violin body. About the minerals found in the original cremonese grounds, I don't think that they were used to dampen the wood, but to impermeabilize the wood from the oil varnish. There is no varnish or oxidized oil in the wood pores (if they weren't introduced by the restorers using some kind of polishes on the bare wood). The supposed desiderable dampening charact. are due to the age of the wood and the continuous use of the instruments, but it depends largely on how the instrument was/is made.

I don't use "modes" to tune my backs and tops other than the Sacconi's guidelines, but if you are dampening the wood what happen with the modes?

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1 hour ago, Claudio Rampini said:

I don't use "modes" to tune my backs and tops other than the Sacconi's guidelines, but if you are dampening the wood what happen with the modes?

In general, dampening a mode will make it less peaky, and broaden it from what it otherwise would be.
Some people believe that one characteristic of a great violin is that it will tend to sound the same on all notes.
I am not a subscriber to that belief. To me, even the differences in sound and amplitude within the frequency width of vibrato can make the sound really pop.

One of the failures of early synthesizers was that they formulated every note the same, so it sounded rather boring and repetitive, unlike real acoustic instruments. But it did sound different enough from conventional instruments, that it did gain some temporary traction. Later, they began to sample the acoustic signature of every note. That's when it became more popular

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27 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Some people believe that one characteristic of a great violin is that it will tend to sound the same on all notes.

There might be a tiny bit of truth there : some people think a good violin changes from note to note in a way that is consistent and predictable. No erratic jumps. My Proff. during Conservatory insisted we hold a position as much as possible within reason - the change of strings would bring in more variety in color. Like everything else, some like it, some don't. 

This is in a way similar with the old question if the instruments in a quartet should be tonally similar of different. I vote for different but others disagree.

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On 8/4/2024 at 4:11 PM, Victor Roman said:

I always thought that there is nothing really that "ultimately special" about Strads but the fact the best experts work on them and adjust / "tune" them to their utmost best. Add to that that we are listening to Strads being played by the best players. 

By the way, that is just my opinion, I do not expect anybody on MN to agree with me. But I hope young players will start giving more of a chance to new violins and leave antiques where they belong : the museums.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Victor.

I share your hope for young players and young luthiers. Otherwise, the joy of discovery is never known or fully experienced.

Furthermore, when we listen to Strads or Stainers et al, or equivalent classical guitars, we are usually listening on recordings or during expensive live performances in large, acoustically engineered soundspaces. Relatively few people have heard these instruments up close and personal, live not Memorex.

Someone whom most of respect once wrote that Stradivari made (or supervised the making) of lots of 'bad' Strads. Many of those were destroyed centuries ago in house fires, wars, and natural disasters. So, we will never know objectively how good or bad they were.

Finally, after 300+ years of adjusting and finessing and repairing (some of it badly done) who can truly say when an instrument is no longer a "Strad" or "Amati" or "Stainer" but an amalgam of the original article and everything that went it after it left the maker's workshop. To illustrate, there is the story of the man who claimed to have owned ONE axe for 50 fifty years - he had only changed the handle 5 times and the axe-head 3 times.

Keep thinking and sharing your thoughts, Victor.

Kindest regards to all,

Randy O'Malley

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11 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

There might be a tiny bit of truth there : some people think a good violin changes from note to note in a way that is consistent and predictable. No erratic jumps. My Proff. during Conservatory insisted we hold a position as much as possible within reason - the change of strings would bring in more variety in color. Like everything else, some like it, some don't. 

This is in a way similar with the old question if the instruments in a quartet should be tonally similar of different. I vote for different but others disagree.

I am not a player but I am an avid long-term listener (55+ years) of string quartets and other instrument family ensembles; both live and audiophile recordings/equipment.

I vote for tonally different but well matched - like the various textures in a black and white still-life photograph or the flavour from different apple varieties in blended apple cider.

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On 8/5/2024 at 12:19 PM, Victor Roman said:

 

Maybe we should learn be more flexible

Amen!! Give that man a chocolate cigar.

Being more flexible as listeners/players/makers allows us to continue to enjoy favourite works of music after our hearing changes - either gradually due to age or suddenly due to injury or disease. 

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12 hours ago, David Burgess said:

One of the failures of early synthesizers was that they formulated every note the same, so it sounded rather boring and repetitive, unlike real acoustic instruments.

I have the same complaint about drum machines on rock and pop music recordings vs an actual acoustic drum kit. 

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19 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I think "evaporate" is the wrong word. These oils will soak into unfinished wood to varying degrees. Once soaked into the wood, they can take a long time to "dry". Unless this first coat is thoroughly dry, subsequent coats can also soak into the wood, leaving little or none on the surface. That's where the oil is going (or is possibly being transferred to other objects which come in contact), as opposed to "evaporating".

Tung oil will more quickly and easily "dry" into a harder, varnish-like substance than linseed oil will. It will also darken less over time than most linseed oils.

What are your thoughts on the crystalization of wood extractives in very old instruments actually brightening the sounds?

I have uncoated thin plates of the same wood species (same terroir) that were felled and planed 200 years apart. The older plates definitely sound brigher and louder. 

 

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