THE SOLE MAKING AND VENDING OF STRINGS FOR VIOLINS AND OTHER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Year: 1772

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, WILLIAM
LOVELACE, of the Parish of Saint Leonard, Shoreditch, in the County of
Middlesex, Watchmaker, send greeting.
WHEREAS Flis present Majesty, by His Royal Letters Patent, bearing
date at Westminster, the Thirty-first day of January, in the twelfth year of
His reign, was graciously pleased to grant unto me, my executors, adñiors,
and assigns, license for "THE SOLE MAKING AND VENDING OF STRINGS FOR VIOLINS
AND OTHER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," within that part of His Majestys' Kingdom
of Great Britain called England, His Dominion of Wales, and Town of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, for the term of fourteen years.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Lovelace, in compliance with
and performance of a proviso or condition in such Letters Patent contained, do
bereby describe and ascertain the nature of my said Invention, and in what
manner the same is to be performed, in the manner following:-
Take fresh sheep or lamb's guts, discharge their contents, clean them well
in water, and let them soak therein till their fleshy substance will readily part
from the gut with an iron scraper, when they must be put into water again

page_text: for many days, according to the nature of the guts and the heat of the weather,
till they are bright and fine, then put them into a brine to give them strength
and preserve their whiteness; made in the following manner-Take of any
fixed salt, except the alimentry, and dissolve it in water, and this must be
stronger or weaker according to the nature of the guts and heat of the weather,
add thereto a little lime and oil well mixed; in this composition they must
remain many days, scraping them to remove any fleshiness or other hetero-
genous matter that may remain after the first scraping, leaving nothing but
the bare gut fine and transparent. Then they may be twisted more or less
together, according to the size the string is to be, and fumed with brimstone;
when dry, if any little roughness remains upon them it must be rubbed of with
a nett made with small meshes of the coarsest wool, or rather of camel's hair,
then oiled, and the string is finished. The manner of wiering fiddle strings so
as not to injure the gut, as is the case from the present mode, and to wier
them more compact and firm, is as follows:-Let two wheels with groves on
their edges be fixed in a frame close and similar to each other, wind the string
round the rim of one of those wheels, put the other end of the string through
a hollow iron turned stud, and fasten it to the rim of the other wheel, upon
the other iron stud, whose bore must be in a line with the upper edges
of those wheels or pullys, so as not to draw the string from a right line; on
the stud there must be a pully for the band of a large wheel to move it
reund, and on the flat of this pully must be a stud with a bobbin filled with
wire and to move round upon the stud with a proper degree of stiffness to
bind the wire tight upon the string; when this pully is set in motion the end
of the wire from the bobbin being fastned to the string, it will be wound
round the string with very little strain upon the string; and as it winds round
the string it will be conveyed from the wheel or pully on which the string
was first wound upon the other; reason that the string but just fill the
bore of the stud, weights or spring must be used to the two pullys to give
the string a proper tention. Oil used in the manufacturing of strings and
preserving them when made should be edulcorated by putting into it lime and
lead, till it is as limpid and white as water.

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBRED, that on the aforesaid Twenty-sixth day of
May, in the year above said, the aforesaid William Lovelace came before our
said Lord the King in His Chancery, and acknowledged the Specification of
his Invention aforesaid, and all and every thing therein contained and specified,
in form above written. And also the Specification afores" was stampt accord-
ing to the tenor of the Statute made in the sixth year of the reign of the late
King and Queen William and Mary of England, and so forth.