howard posner wrote:
Does dyeing? The question, if I am again unmistaken, was whether a
process used for dyeing might incidentally increase the density/
weight of a string. As far as I can see, adding anything to the
string's innards is going to increase its density, though the
increase may be negligible. Anyone who uses gut strings knows they
get denser from absorbing water when the humidity rises.
What seems to me more feasible, as regards to the increase of the
density of the gut string, is that some substances that were
traditionally used in dyeing of organic materials, such as iron and
copper sulphates for instance, may well have initiated the idea of
"loading" gut with an extra mass. These salts, or indeed even more
heavier ones, may well remain as purely "mechanical" residues in-between
the long chains of molecules that constitute the fibrous part of the gut
( the main part of it which, in a way, is responsible for strength
factor of the gut string). As a matter of fact the specific weight of
iron and copper sulfates is about 1.8 - 1.9 and 2.2 - 2.3 accordingly,
certainly more than the gut itself.
Alexander
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