shabadaows
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Can I put vernish on my turkish oud ?
Hello eveyone,
I have a turkish oud and I'd like to put some vernish on it in order it stays clean, because when I put my fingers on the wood it may become dirty.
But maybe it's not a good idea ?!?
I need some advices about it : does it exist turkish oud with vernish ? If I put vernish, will I loose a lot of resonance ?
If I can put it, what kind of vernish can I put ? A simple vernish for wood, is that great ?
Thanks for your help 
Jean-Philippe
http://www.youtube.com/user/shabadaows
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Luttgutt
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Welcome to the forum Jean-Philippe!
This has been discussed before here http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=10455#pid70...
I am sure you find more if you use the search buttom up to the left.
Good luck
The wood might be dead, but the oud is alive.
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fernandraynaud
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Hi, Jean Philippe,
The most important thing is "different finish for different oud parts". Definitely search the forum!
I assume you are asking about the Fingerboard and the answer is: Yes, but only alcohol-based Shellac, best applied using what in English they call
the "French Polish" technique, though mine sometimes turns out a little uneven, I like to call it "Belgian Polish" 
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jdowning
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Traditionally, no varnish (oil based or spirit based shellac) was used on fingerboards or soundboards of ouds (or lutes).
Fingerboards are usually made from a dark hard woods such as ebony or rosewood that, conveniently, do not show finger stains readily.
Sound boards were traditionally sealed to minimise staining of the wood but not with a varnish (possibly with a flexible egg/turpentine solution or a
light wax coating). Varnish on a sound board can deaden the response of the instrument.
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fernandraynaud
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Oh, yeah, Jean-Philippe, I forgot the old egg-white trick.
But grime is not acoustically inert. As you grind skin oils and dead cells and hamburger drippings and pancake syrup and melted cheese and anchovies
and axle grease and drool and blood and sweat into the wood, over the years your soundboard will pick up that inner-city patina. This patina is what
prevents "the right" from hearing the suffering of the masses, the fact that poor people are coated with it deadens the sound of their complaints.
Your soundboard will also be affected. Better a little shellac than permanent dirt?
On a clean soundboard, if you start to apply a bit of shellac with a little pad you will find you can seal it against dirt with such a thin layer that
no acoustic deadening is conceivable.
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jdowning
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Sufferings of the 'great unwashed' apart (!), what do the professional luthiers - trained in the old oud making traditions - have to say about
applying shellac to a soundboard? If the professionals do apply a sealer (rather than leaving the surface bare and untouched) what do they
recommend?
Surviving lutes that are centuries old, reportedly, all have sound boards with a uniform brownish patina (with no localised staining). The sound
boards seem to have had some kind of clear sealer applied (i.e. absorbed into the surface of the wood) - but it is anybody's guess what this might
have been. The egg white solution is modern guesswork (originally proposed, as far as I know, by lute maker Ian Harwood during the early 1970's).
Harwood's solution is to use the whole egg (not just the egg white) mixed with turpentine. Although I have not tried it, this sealer dries to an
invisible finish that gradually turns a uniform brown on exposure to light. Alternatively, some professional lute makers apply a thin coating of
wax.
No ouds survive prior to the late 18th C but those that do likely have soundboards with the same uniform patina as lutes? An old Egyptian oud that I
own has a sound board thinly coated with an invisible wax or wax like substance.
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Luttgutt
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Jdowning, I thought that my old ouds (including the Nahats) were "brownish" because they have cedar wood! Am I mistaken?
One more thing (maybe on the side!?):
3 weeks ago I decided to "clean" the area between the sound hole and the pick gard on one of my cheep ouds (Sukar model1. No offence Tony  )
It was really blackish and ugly.
So I used (secratly ) a litle "lemon oil" from Jameel Khalf.
And it worked like magic. The spot looks now as good as new (a litle darker than the rest).
BUT to my big surprise, and countrary to all what I read and hear, the sound opend up and became BRIGHTER and a litle
LOUDER??!!
How can this be explaned?
The wood might be dead, but the oud is alive.
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fernandraynaud
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Geko, can we agree that the soundboard is the most critical element in an oud's timbre? I am not surprised that the brownish "patina", be it entire
breakfasts or just the eggs, would deaden the sound, as would a thick layer of oil, wax, urethane. Thin oils wiped on a soundboard with an existing
layer of "patina", as in your case, probably don't leave much on the wood, the net effect being for the better.
John, are you advocating untreated wood or eggs? since we don't really know what the alleged patina on the European lutes is, and there are no
preserved ancient ouds, nor any reason to believe they were superior to today's, can we appeal to common sense and anecdotal support? I have
repeatedly heard about the horrors of deep oiling and waxing of soundboards from the harpsichord side, with no reason to doubt it.
Having tried Pad-Rubbing shellac in alcohol I find it so thin, so brittle, and so discreet, that I'm personally sold on it. Schleske's extensive
research on violin varnishes supports the idea of shellac being brittle and good, while waxes and polymerizing oils are elastic and bad.
http://www.schleske.de/en/our-research/introduction-violin-acoustic...
http://www.sea-acustica.es/Sevilla02/musgen002.pdf
To each his own, but if we leave a raw wood, everything sticks and penetrates, and I find it intuitively "obvious" that a layer of crud will in time
muffle the soundboard by smearing resonant peaks and slowing sound propagation.
A thin layer of a hard wax like carnuba is probably harmless, quite different from saturating raw wood with beeswax or linseed oil.
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paulO
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Hi shabadaows,
If you love to experiment, and have some experience with wood finishes, then maybe you might want to consider giving some of the suggestions a shot.
Otherwise, my advice is just play and enjoy your oud. Good luck.
Cordially..PaulO
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jdowning
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PaulO's advice is probably the best - don't attempt any modifications to your oud unless you really know what you are doing.
If you wear clean clothes when playing you will likely avoid the usual staining at contact points around the edges of the sound board. Don't play the
oud in your greasy work clothes or with dirty hands!
I am not advocating putting this or that kind of finish on sound boards (or fingerboards) but am generally curious to learn or discover how oud (and
lute) makers may have traditionally treated (or not treated) their sound boards. It seems to me that the best persons to respond to this question
would be luthiers with in depth experience, knowledge and training in the unbroken oud making traditions. How or why a violin maker or harpsichord
builder - or guitar maker even - finishes a sound board the way that he does is of no relevance here.
Luttgutt, your old ouds may well have sound boards made from true cedar (i.e. Cedar of Lebanon or its variants) or alternatively the closely related
Fir species (used on lutes). In either case the soundboard would have started life a light reddish/tan which would deepen in colour over time with
exposure to light. The question is do the sound boards have any kind of finish on them?
The improvement in sound that you noted after applying a furniture polish to a small area of your oud might have had nothing to do with cleaning dirt
from a small area of the sound board as there are many other possible alternative explanations. For example, to access the area of the sound board in
order to apply the polish you presumably had to remove the strings. This may have altered the stress distributions in the instrument to beneficial
effect or re-tensioning the strings to a slightly higher (or lower) pitch than before might also have been of benefit acoustically. Obviously, if you
renewed the strings this might also be significant. Also use of a different risha than before could make a difference. Other factors might be change
in relative humidity or a change in room acoustics.
Psychological and physiological considerations may also play their part - after all the improvement in sound is a subjective perception not a
scientifically measured 'before and after' change.
I trust that you will not be considering applying lemon oil to your Nahat and other old oud sound boards in an effort to improve their acoustic
performance!
Apologies for going a bit off track on your topic shabadaows.
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fernandraynaud
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So we all agree that the answer to the original question is "Naw, better not".
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Luttgutt
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Don't worry jdowning, I have no plans of toughing the Nahats 
To answer your question: I have no idea wether or not some kind of "varnish" was used on those ouds!
Any chance you can tell from the picture?
http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=10297#pid69...
But about my "oiled" Sukar oud:
No, no new strings. This is a oud I haven't played much in two years. So I did not bother.
I took 2 recordings (with the same pic. But yes, I use now a totally different pick than the one I used 2 years ago), one reight before I cleaned it
with the oil, and one a couple of days later (it took a couple of days before it opend up). And I can "hear" a difference!
But I am not dismissing the pchycological factor (it is the ONLY explanation I have, as for way the oud got better).
p.s. can't post any d.... files here (I know, I am bad at this)
The wood might be dead, but the oud is alive.
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jdowning
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Impossible to tell from the images or from the images of Nahat family ouds posted by Dr Oud on his website. Richard would be in a good position to
comment as he has first hand knowledge of Nahat ouds with experience in examining a number of these instruments from various periods. My understanding
is that the soundboards of these ouds (and most other surviving top of the line ouds ) were never varnished or treated with any substance - just left
'in the raw'. Looking at the images it is interesting that the sound boards appear to have a uniform patina - free of localised staining at points of
contact with the human body - and reflect the light with a sheen, almost as if the surfaces have been polished in some way.
For information, I have checked the original article dating to 1979 by Ian Harwood on the proposed egg finish for lute sound boards. Harwood did not
'discover' egg white as a sound board finish as he reports that others had used this as a finish and that it oxidises to form a clear waterproof
elastic film - but "the wood underneath remains pale and shows the dirt in an annoying way".
His discovery was to use the whole egg - a method employed by 16th C artists in Tempera painting - the egg mixture being used both as a medium in
which to grind the colour pigments as well as a surface finish. The drawback (to the artists of the day) was that the finish oxidised over time to a
uniform brown colour - which is the appearance of the old lute sound boards.
Preparation is first to break a whole fresh egg into a jar and shake it up until the yolk and white are completely mixed together. An equal volume of
boiled linseed oil is then added and the whole lot again shaken until thoroughly mixed together. Two equal volumes of water are then added -
everything then being shaken until thoroughly mixed. The order in which the ingredients are added is important. The emulsion must be made fresh each
time but will keep for up to a week in a refrigerator - shaken well before use. Applied with a stiff brush so that the emulsion sinks into the wood
but does not stay on the surface like a varnish.
Not sure if this finish is "de rigeur" among lute makers these days or if new research has been able to determine if another treatment was (or was
not) used on early lute sound boards. Just for information and not recommending its use in any way!
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fernandraynaud
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John, I think you dismiss the data from other instruments too casually. After all, we have remarkable specimens of both violin and harpsichord several
centuries old that sound great, and apparently not a single oud. How remarkable in timbre are the oldest lutes? (I am not being sarcastic, are they
truly striking?)
There is one consistent thread regarding soundboards, it's intuitively appealing and perhaps bears repeating, and that is that anything that makes the
wood of a soundboard more elastic and "gummy" kills the tone, and what is brittle is good.
Forgive me, but fifty percent boiled linseed oil applied "so the emulsion sinks into the wood" sounds risky, it may be a great way to gum up a
soundboard. At THAT rate surface-spraying a polyurethane varnish sounds benign, and French Polishing with micro-layers of an alcohol based shellac
completely transparent. Who came up with the linseed oil?
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jdowning
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As I said before concerning the proposed 'whole egg' solution "Just for information and not recommending its use in any way!".
The 16th C artists used linseed oil (the basic material for making their oil paints) as part of this medium and finish. The egg apparently allows the
linseed oil and water to mix as an emulsion hence the importance of adding oil to egg before the water.
It is almost certain in these days of strict conservation of artifact collections in museums that none of the old lutes are in their original playing
condition or are otherwise capable of withstanding full string tension (lutes are a lot more fragile than violins or harpsichords). So it would be
impossible to form an opinion. The best that can be done is to try to replicate - as closely as is practical - those lutes in museum collections that
are not in too great a state of disrepair. There are many fine quality replica lutes made by today's top luthiers that sound great (to our modern ear)
complete with their all gut stringing and played by today's virtuoso lutenists using historically correct technique - a good indication of how the
lutes likely must have sounded in their day.
My understanding is that a characteristic of the varnishes found on old violins is that they were 'plastic' to the point that they never fully harden
(linseed oil!) so, for example, might show fingerprints impressions that would later disappear as the varnish re-flowed. Note also that none of the
surviving violins by the great luthiers is in original condition having been re-necked during the 19th C to allow use of higher tension modern strings
that although sounded loud and great to Victorian ears sound nothing like the instruments in their original condition.
If there are surviving old lutes (or ouds) with an original oil varnish or shellac finish on their sound boards I am not aware of it. I am not really
interested in what concoction a modern maker might apply to the sound boards of his lutes and ouds unless it can be demonstrated that the finishes
have an historical basis (i.e. for ouds and lutes). The general consensus seems to be - among experienced oud makers - that oud sound boards were,
traditionally, always left untreated and in the 'raw'. So, if there are historical exceptions lets hear about them.
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jdowning
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For information and for comparison, the attached image shows the natural colour of Cedar of Lebanon. (Western Red Cedar - a sound board material
currently available for guitars (not a true cedar species) presumably was never used for ouds historically).
The European species of Fir show similar colouration.
Neither Cedar of Lebanon nor Fir - as far as I know - are available today as sound board material. The Cedar of Lebanon that I have seen recently
offered for sale is knotty, irregular material totally unsuitable for sound boards - presumably obtained from culled, open grown, specimens from
arboretums and gardens rather than from tall, straight, close grained forest grown trees.
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DaveH
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I know we're straying here but I will hopefully see Michael Lowe quite soon as he lives near to me. He worked on the restoration of the 16thC Sixtus
Rauwolf lute now played by Jacob Lindberg, supposedly the only surviving example from this period in a playable condition (and it has an astonishing
tone). I'll ask him.
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fernandraynaud
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As you probably know, John, I am interested in past practices, but I'm most concerned about what I/we can and should do to squeeze
the best sound and playability out of our instruments, at least expense. I was trying to answer the original question, re: Jean-Philippe's soundboard.
When we keep instruments out in the room (and I'm pretty sure that's healthy), a thin layer of something is almost a necessity to keep (even)
dust from adhering to and working into the grain/fibers of untreated wood. Chances are that any Turkish soundboard already has a thin sealer on it.
The simplified consensus: varnishes are variable and risky; oils are a no no; shellac in ethanol is considered OK, as is brushing on filtered egg
white.
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jdowning
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Mike Lowe would be a good informed source about surviving lute soundboards as a prominent professional luthier and having extensive experience in
studying surviving lutes in the European collections. Let us know what he has to say DaveH.
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