Guitar Strings: Bronze Wound on Steel, Then Heat-Soaked (Stone and Falcone 1977)

A wound string is a steel core with another wire wrapped round it. Stone and Falcone believed the wrap keeps stresses from the winding and slowly unwinds as the string is played, so the tone goes dead. Their fix: after winding, heat-soak the string, at least 2 hours at 270 °F or 30 minutes at 480 °F for a bronze wrap, then let it cool. Source: W. N. Stone and A. S. Falcone (National Musical String Co.), US 4,063,674 (1977). Unknown: where phosphor bronze wire comes from, and the gauges. The winding, which the patent calls conventional, is ours, after Landtroop and Dykstra, US 6,256,872 (2001). These are linked to unknown heads. The plain strings of the set are steel music wire; that, the oven and the nitrogen are ours. Picture drawn by Youblob.

متقدم

1 day

التعليمات

Cut the core and plain strings

Cut steel music wire for the cores of the wound strings and for the plain strings of the set. Unknown: the gauges and lengths, and the ball ends.

المواد لهذه الخطوة:

سلك فولاذي موسيقي 0.032"1 as required

الأدوات المطلوبة:

قاطعة أسلاك مائلة

أبعاد غير معروفة

Wind the bronze wrap at room temperature

Wrap phosphor bronze wire helically round each core at room temperature. The patent prefers a wrap that expands more with heat than the core. The patent says only 'in a conventional manner'. Ours, after Landtroop and Dykstra, US 6,256,872 (2001): hook the core's ball end on the motor-driven headstock spindle, grip the other end in the tailstock chuck and stretch it with the tailstock tension cylinder; fix the end of the cover wire at the ball end, then spin the core while a carriage travels toward the tailstock, paying the cover wire out under tension from its spool; cut it off at the end.

المواد لهذه الخطوة:

سلك برونز فوسفوري1 as required

الأدوات المطلوبة:

آلة لف الأوتار

أبعاد غير معروفة

نظارات أمان

Heat-soak the wound strings

Heat the wound strings for a bronze wrap at 270-480 °F (132-249 °C): at least 2 hours at 270 °F or at least 30 minutes at 480 °F, shorter the hotter. If the wire tarnishes in hot air, do it without air, in nitrogen or carbon dioxide. The wrap's turns settle into more even spacing.

الأدوات المطلوبة: