Why does our production cycle strictly follow the historical one
- These strings are produced using exclusively whole unsplit lamb gut, according to the historical Italian tradition that was in use starting from the 16th century and up to the first two decadies of the 20th century, and that was thought to have been definitively lost, until today (2108).
In France, Austria and Germany, where small sized animals were not available, in order to obtain the proper gauge for the Violin and Lute 1st, the gut was necessarily cut lengthwise (with a device called ‘splitting horn’) in two separate strips. In Italy, this procedure of cutting the gut was always considered a sort of commercial fraud, to an extent that anyone who was found mixing stripes of split gut together with whole gut, or selling strings made with split gut and passing them as unsplit whole gut would have been criminally prosecuted and severely fined. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the gut splitting became the normal practice in Italy as well, and the procedure used in the past centuries was definitively abandoned.In our experience, hormones, medicines and partially polluted environment do not influence the characteristics of the raw material. - The type of gut to be used has a great importance on the quality of the finished string. What we use comes exclusively from animals living in specific climatic conditions and nutritional environments: in analogy with the variety of spruce that is particularly suitable for soundboards, we can rightly introduce the concept of ‘gut for music’.
- The chemical treatments we use have the same active substance found in the burned white wine lees employed by the string makers of the past in their treatments, that were composed of various concentrations of potash of vegetal origin.
- Our knowledge of the whole historical production process allows us to start directly form the raw material coming from the slaughterhouse, if we wanted to. Nevertheless, for reasons of convenience, we prefer to start from a gut that has already been perfectly cleaned by the local producer, who will take charge of completing the phases 1, 2 and 3 of the historical procedure listed below. There is clear evidence from several historical documents that this also happened frequently in the past when the slaughterhouse was not placed near to the string making company.
- Polishing by hand, or mechanical grinding?
The historical polishing provides that the smoothening was made by hand using a cloth containing a specific herb with abrasive properties (or pumice powder) together with a few drops of oil: such technique is well known to us (and we could certainly apply it); nonetheless, there are three important factors that have led us to prefer a mechanical grinding:- among the hand-polished strings there will always be a certain percentage of false strings (because of their non-consistent diameter), due to possible and unavoidable inaccuracies of the worker.
- when polishing by hand, it is not possible to obtain all the precise scaling of the commercial diameters at will, even though the input strings are produced with the same number of guts. Just to make an example, in a batch of upper e strings for the violin, all composed of three combined guts, the resulting polished strings will show a natural ‘random’ range of diameters following a bell-shaped curve, called Gaussian curve, between 0.62 and 0.73 mm: this range is too wide, according to modern criteria where regular steps of only a few hundredths of mm are expected (i.e.: 62, 64, 66, 68, and so on). Using a mechanical grinding (specifically adjusted not to completely smoothen the strings), the strings will comply with the modern requirements without compromising its quality.
- when hand-polishing, there’s no real control on the actual quantity of material that is being removed while rubbing: usually, the removed material is by far more considerable than the one removed by a mechanical grinding machine, that can be accurately adjusted to maintain a constant grinding intensity.
The historical production cycle
Our production cycle
Please note: nowadays phases 1, 2, and 3 of the historical cycle, necessary to obtain a raw material perfectly cleaned of the fat, are carried out by the producer – the slaughterhouse. Likewise, this was done in the past as well, whenever the slaughterhouse was not in the immediate surroundings of the string-making company.
1| Cleaning from the inner manure
The small intestine of sheep, that is 20-25 meters long, gets emptied of the manure and silt by hand-squeezing. This operation needs to be done as soon as possible inside the slaughterhouse itself.
2| Putrid fermentation
The previously emptied gut gets rinsed in running water and is then placed in still water for 1 to 2 days for a fermentation process that weakens the bonds between the various membranes forming the intestine, so that they can be divided.
3| Scraping
All the needless membranes are scraped off with a cut-in-half cane, so that the muscolar membrane gets perfectly cleared.
3| Scraping and final salting
(operation carried out by the producer)
4| Preventive immersion in potash (Tempra)
coming from burned wine lees
For several days, gut undergoes chemical conditioning in baths of different concentrations, in order to optimize the acoustic performance and the mechanical resistance of gut, as well as allow the final cleaning from the residual fat.
4| Desalting and subsequent immersion in chemically pure potash solutions (Tempra baths)
For several days, gut undergoes chemical conditioning in baths with different concentrations of potassium carbonate, aimed to optimize the acoustic performance and the mechanical resistance of gut.
5| Thimble rubbing
This procedure is used to remove all remaining traces of fat and of mucous and sub-mucous membranes that may still be present. For a whole week, the intestines are repeatedly rubbed by hand several times a day using a degreaser thimble, increasing the concentration of the potash solution at every passage.
6| Selection
Guts are then selected depending on their diameter. As it was in use in the historical method, greater diameters are used to produce thicker strings, while smaller diameters are selected for the thinner strings.
7| Cutting the gut in strands: not used
Two strands are obtained by cutting lengthwise the gut. This technique was widely employed outside of Italy, where intestines of small diameters were not available.
8| Combining the guts according to the desired diameter of the string
Depending on the desired diameter of the finished string, a different number of guts are combined and tied together at their ends.
8| Combining the guts according to the desired diameter of the string
Depending on the desired diameter of the finished string, a different number of guts are combined and tied together at their ends.
9| Twisting of the strings on the frame
The strings are twisted on a moveable wooden frame.
9| Twisting of the strings on the frame
The strings are twisted on a light aluminum alloy frame.
10| Rubbing with braided horsehair
The fresh strings that have just been stretched on the frame are rubbed using a braid of horsehair soaked in potash (Tempra) for the purpose of leveling out and regularizing the string as well as removing the excess of soaked water.
10| Rubbing with braided horsehair
The fresh strings that have just been stretched on the frame are rubbed using a braid of horsehair soaked in potash (Tempra) for the purpose of leveling out and regularizing the string as well as removing the excess of soaked water.
11| Bleaching by means of sulphurization
The fresh strings stretched on the frame are treated in a hermetically sealed room with vapours of sulphur dioxide until they present a light yellow coloring, once well dried.
Please note: any kind of unbleached gut will always present a dark brownish or even blackish color.
11| Bleaching by means of hydrogen peroxide
In the past, the only known bleaching agent was sulphur dioxide, obtained by burning some sulphur. We could use the same procedure, however we prefer to use a diluted solution of hydrogen peroxide: there is a lower environmental impact and the final result is aesthetically the same.
12| Drying and re-twisting
During the drying process, the strings need additional twistings.
13| Manual polishing
After being dried in open air, the strings are polished using a cloth containing a dried abrasive herb (or pumice powder) moistened with oil. Usually the thinner first strings are only lightly polished, maintaining a slightly coarse surface.
13| Mechanical grinding
Using centerless grinding machines, the strings undergo a moderate and controlled diameter reduction, so that they result being perfectly homogeneous and there are no wasted false strings, as it might unfortunately happen when polishing them manually. This light treatment allows a longer lifespan of the strings, while maintaining the same acoustical characteristics and stability to climatic changes of the hand-polished strings.
