Scarnatura: the first thing to do at the factory
In this videos, originally Facebook Live, I went to the butcher to buy some lamb row intestines to show you the first part of the cleaning.
This should never be done in a river directly, because the clod water will result in a stiffer gut. Normally the gut is left for at least a couple of days in water at 18/20°C so that the fermentation helps the cleaning. But I didn't feel like doing it in my bathroom: opening my facebook page in my bathroom seemed not a nice start, this location is much nicer... and the smell is not too strong this way!
This entertaining video below shows what I had in mind to show you myself. Unfortunately the material I had was already cleaned from the big waste part.
Of course we do not need to put it inside out to make strings...
...and this is how they normally do today, with machines, in modern casings factories:
At the end you see a inox table with intestines arriving from another room, probably from upstairs , on a slide. One after another, this is the “capacity” of the slaughtering process upstairs.
This is how it works in a slaughter house: a different room for each part of the process, so that not all of the workers are directly connected with the death moment. They just see the parts, like in a butcher shop.
Animals are not slaughtered for their guts, but for the meet. So, if you are ethically concerned, before wandering if it is really worth to use gut strings, I would recommend not to waste food. It would already be a great difference. In the world are slaughtered more animals per day than the people living on earth, like if we all ate one animal per day... and I am speaking only about cows, pigs, chickens, not to mention wild animals, fishes and others.
Tags
baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, gut strings, gut strings history, gut strings maintenance, gut strings manufacture, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings
Do you ever struggle during a concert for false intonation… just to discover that while your pure gut strings were going down, the wound ones were going up? please comment below to share your experience and suggestions!
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