The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation

This is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument. As one of the world's leading conservators of musical instruments, Stewart Pollens gives practical advice on the handling, storage, display and use of historic musical instruments in museums and other settings, and provides technical information on such wide-ranging subjects as acoustics, cleaning, climate control, corrosion, disinfestation, conservation ethics, historic stringing practice, measurement and historic metrology, retouching, tuning historic temperaments, varnish and writing reports. There are informative essays on the conservation of each of the major musical instrument groups, the treatment of paper, textiles, wood and metal, as well as historic techniques of wood and metalworking as they apply to musical instrument making and repair. This is a practical guide that includes equations, formulas, tables and step-by-step instructions.

Introduction; Entries A-Z: Acoustics; Benzotriazole; Bleach; Boxwood; Brass, bronze, and nickel silver alloys; Brass and nickel silver cleaning; Brass instrument conservation; Bronze disease; Calendar; Cents conversion; Chemical analysis; Cleaning: soaps and detergents; Clavichord maintenance; Compo or pastiglia; Conservation reports; Dendrochronology; Dictionary of common and obsolete chemical terms; Disinfestation; Drill bits; Ebony and ebonizing; Electroplating and electro-cleaning; Epoxy removal; Ethics; Flutes; Fortepiano maintenance; French polishing; Frets, tied and fixed; Gilding; Glues, pastes, and other adhesives; Grain painting and marbling; Grit size comparison chart; Guitar stringing; Gut strings; Handling, storage, and transporting musical instruments; Harp maintenance and stringing; Harpsichord maintenance; Helmholtz resonator; Historical metrology; Humidity control; Hurdy gurdy stringing; Illumination level; Inscriptions, faded; Intervals; Iron and steel; Ivory; Japanning; Keyboard instrument conservation; Labels; Lacquer; Lakes; Lead and lead alloys; Leather; Lute stringing; Measurement; Measurement system conversion; Mersenne's Law; Metallurgy; Metalworking; Mold making; Mother-of-pearl and abalone; Nickel silver cleaning; Oddy test; Organ restoration; Overspun strings; Paper, pencil, and ink; Parchment, vellum, and slunk; Patination; Pegs; Piano action regulation (modern grand); Pitch; Proportion; Recording; Relative humidity; Retouching; Rosin; Safety equipment; Scaling; Sealing wax; Sharpening tools; Silver cleaning; Soldering; Solvents and solvent cleaning; Specific gravity; Staining wood; Stain removal; Stradivari's varnish; Stringed keyboard restoration; Tap drill sizes; Tapers; Temperature; Tempering steel; Textile cleaning; Tinning; Tortoiseshell, horn, and whalebone; Tuning and temperament; Vapor-phase inhibitor paper; Varnish; Viola da Gamba strings; Violin adjustment; Violin, baroque fittings and strings; Violin sizes; Violin and viola strings, modern; Vulcanite and ebonite; Wax cleaning emulsion; Wire gauge systems for early keyboard instruments; Wheat paste; Wood; Woodwind instrument conservation; Woodworking.

Stewart Pollens served between 1976 and 2006 as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he restored and maintained a collection of over five thousand instruments. He is the author of over eighty scholarly articles and four books, including Forgotten Instruments (1980), The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari (1992), The Early Pianoforte (1995; reprinted 2009), Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (1998), François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker (2001), and Stradivari (2010), which won a 2011 Choice award for 'Outstanding Academic Title'. In 1997 he was the recipient of the American Musical Instrument Society's Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize for The Early Pianoforte, a study of the invention and early history of the pianoforte. He is also a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and writes frequently for The Strad.