Regarding the use of mercury (or lead) to load a gut string: if it were a problem wouldn't we have seen at least some contemporary reports of professional lutenists with poisining symptoms - I'm not aware of any. But perhaps the amount of mercuric compound is so relatively small (unlike with the hatters who rubbed raw mercury into hats with their fingers) that there's no noticeable effect. Surely a toxologist should be able to inform us....
MH --- On Mon, 23/2/09, "Mathias Roesel" <mathias.roe...@t-online.de> wrote: From: "Mathias Roesel" <mathias.roe...@t-online.de> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Laurent de La Hyre To: "David van Ooijen" <davidvanooi...@gmail.com> Cc: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Date: Monday, 23 February, 2009, 2:23 PM "David van Ooijen" <davidvanooi...@gmail.com> schrieb: > On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:26 AM, "Mathias Roesel" > <mathias.roe...@t-online.de> wrote: > >> rarely touch it). With later providing you play a lot, the skin contact is > >> enormous. > > > > You might consider playing with nails, then. > > On both hands? > > David No, RH, of course. It will reduce poisoning by 50%! But seriously I wonder if densifying a gut string with mercury, which is easily composed with organic materials, means that afterwards the string still is poisonous. And, no, I'm not willing to try it. -- Mathias To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --