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estebanana -> RE: first it was salt now it is.... (Jul. 21 2012 21:42:35)
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Curious, I'm willing to think about it for more than ten seconds.
Some historical background:
In Cremona and 16th century Italy there was a depth gauging tool which employed a stop and a needle. The tool looks like two long arms with a hinge connecting them on one side. The stop was set to a certain depth and the arm opened and closed pressing down the pointed tip into the wood.
The pinpricks were placed all over the inside of the belly and back at a stage in carving the concave side of the arching. The luthier 'connected the dots' with a gouge by carving out to the depth until the pin hole was removed. This ensured a uniform a controlled removal of material.
You may not know this, but a good sawyer and good saw sharpener knows that a saw blade can be carefully peened with a hammer in certain places to remove stress in the steel blade. The Japanese saw makers are especially adept and in tune with this. When they tune up a hand made or even a machine made saw it cuts better, pulls truer after they peen the blade. I personally do not have that knowledge or know how they tell where to hit the blade with the hammer. But I have seen this demonstrated and have used the saw before an after the peening process. It makes a difference.
Hand saw blade tuning is fairly esoteric today, in fact sharpening ones own blades is almost never talked about among woodworkers today. So when I look at this process of inserting points of metal in to the wood I can't totally dismiss this due to having seen the peening process done on saw blades.
Now given that wood and metal are very different materials and they hold stress in different ways I am skeptical that this works, but knowing that the Italian violin makers used a pin insertion process and the Japanese saw makers peen the blades to relieve internal stress in the steel I have to keep the door open a crack to thinking about this.
I actually tried to soften up an area under a guitar top in a guitar I was building by doing this. I poked series of pinpricks between the bridge and tail block to make that area more pliable and lessen the contiguous cellular connections in the wood fiber. Did it work? I don't know, but if you put pinpricks into the wood it changes its flexibility and density in small way. I think a great guitar can be made by ignoring al this stuff, but wood makes you wonder about its properties and part of building is acting on your intuition about your materials for good or bad outcome. That way you learn.
What interesting me actually more than the process and why and IF it works, is how we are drawn to thinking up these processes. What motivates people to look for these things and what clues in the daily regular work are there to stimulate you to find these esoteric ways of thinking?
So who knows. Just don't poke my expensive cello.
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