
...the idea came to a cello player...
Sometimes, you wander around the web and you find little gems which only apparently have little to do with what you were looking for.
...but at a closer look... at 0'30 there are some historical pictures: note the dimensions of the factory and the name: Maillot is the actual president of the Savarez strings company... Babolat is from Lyon, we know from Patrizio Barbieri a few hundreds of workers moved to Lyon at the end of 18th century from Rome.
At 0'55 an astonishing picture of the inside of the factory: from left to right, there are machines which substituted the scraping with the cane (those white rolls, there is also a closer look just after in the video), in the center there are ladies selecting guts on a table and on the right they are cleaning with the thimble.
Another nice video showing the actual factory.