Re: playing outdoors

"Turloch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Pauline,
>
> I agree that the geographic location of your part of the country has
> wide variances of humidity and temperature that may combine to possibly
> have detrimental effects on long-term storage without some climate
> control.
>
> A wonderful and quaint philosophy that a luthier I apprenticed with had
> about wooden instruments is that, as he says, 'they are a thing of
> beauty that are created with passion and have a soul to sing. If they
> are denied that opportunity to sing for too long, they die of a broken
> heart. It is our job [as restorers] to mend the broken heart, to
> rekindle the spirit, and to return them to loving hands again.'
>
> > You said that your miraculous violin was buried in a pile of lumber and
that
> > this might have helped save it.  How would that have worked?  One
possible
> > consequence of storage under a lumber pile is termites.  Old violins
have
> > been found with dead insects or worms inside, but the violins were still
> > intact.
>
> This 'wood pile' theory of mine is based only wild speculation, and
> likely not much science:
>
> First, termites fortunately don't exist in our latitudes (at least I
> have never heard of them). But hey, I'm no entomologist, so don't quote
> me on this. :)
>
> That's not to say that the dreaded 'eBay termites' don't appear from
> time to time. In that I refer to someone purchasing a wooden item from
> a termite-prone region of the world and have it shipped to a
> non-termite-prone region of the world.
>
> I have heard stories of of people in non-termite-prone areas opening
> something like a wood box after such an item had been stored for some
> time in their home and discovered fine sawdust. What had likely
> happened was the item may have been shipped when the termites (or some
> other wood-boring insect) were in larval stage and had continued to
> mature after arrival during storage.
>
> The mere speculation about the violin's good condition after being
> buried in a pile of wood planks for years I surmise may have had to do
> with the accumulative density of the strata of planks that separated
> the case from the room air supply.
>
> I'm sure this layer did not necessarily prevent the violin from
> experiencing the extremes of temp/humidity, but the R-facor of
> the wood above it may have made the extremes take place more gradually
> at the depth of the case within the pile. Only one small end of the
> case would have had any actual direct access to air circulation down a
> long void in the pile's end.
>
> Also, it would seems the wood planks would likely absorb and release
> moisture and heat as the environment changed. Whether that factored in
> or not, to slow these transitions, is anyone's guess.
>
> One thing that may have helped was the case itself. It was in a
> 'fiberboard' cheap violin case common to the 1940s-50s which is
> flat on top and bottom, unlike the 'domed' cases. If the case had been
> domed, I fear it most likely would have collapsed under the weight and
> damaged the violin inside.
>
> The weight of the wood piled on top of the case may have also acted in
> sealing the contact between case lid and the case itself, further
> reducing air circulation into the case.
>
> I was unclear about the logic behind this gentleman's unique storage
> scheme. It may have been that he felt that thieves would
> not think of looking in a pile of planks for a violin. It may have also
> been a case of "oh, I'll just put it over there out of the way"
> and then the gradual process of accumulating stuff on top of it took
> place over time. I think that's how most of us men's minds work. ;)
>
> -Turloch

Turloch,

Speaking as a scientist (which I am), I believe that the wood pile on top of
the violin in its case could have contributed significantly to the
miraculous survival and good sound of the violin.  The pile of lumber would
have acted as a buffer for both heat and humidity.  The air pockets in the
lumber pile would have made it a good insulator.  The lumber would absorb
and release water from the air, protecting the violin from large or sudden
changes in the atmospheric humidity near the violin.  You may be right -- 
this may be the secret of success for instruments by Stradivarius.

Pauline