On Nov 23, 2010, at 9:01 AM, Suzanne Angevine wrote: > Here are my questions from that attempt. How do you get any sort of knot to > tighten up with such a stiff, unpliable material? Should the place where the > knot is going to be be worked to loosen it first?
You can tie and burn the knot in a lower position, then slide it up the neck to tighten the fret. i.e. do all the work for your third fret in second fret position, then slide it up. Or you can pull the fret tight with a plier. > And how do you really get that nice melted lump on the ends? I read that a > soldering iron is safer than matches or a lighter, and that is what we tried. > But in all cases (iron or lighter) the gut seems more likely to burn or char > than melt into a nice lump. Its clear that these knots really only hold well > because the lump won't go through the knot, so the quality of the lump seems > important. Any tips on getting a nice, melted lump instead of a rough, > charred end? It's always going to be charred at the end because you're burning it. I've never had any trouble getting a desired lump; maybe you're not letting it burn long enough. It's not brain surgery. Just set the match to the gut until it swells, then blow it out. Don't be afraid; six times out of ten the lute doesn't catch fire. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
