Rubbings and patterns

[Ron Nossaman]

>Ron, here's the reason I ask people to reverse this sequence:

JD, though I'm not a string maker, here's the reason I do it from the hitch:

Bridge pins, while often filed flat ( but not necessarily ), are angled in
opposite directions between front and back rows. Doing the bridge first
distorts the paper and makes it hard to stretch and straighten to the hitch
pins. The hitch pins are, conversely, all angled in a similar direction, so
the paper goes on them clean, snug, and straight, ending up in a position
more nearly exactly duplicating the actual string loop positioning than
would be indicated by a mark at the top of a pin of unknown and probably
not uniform angle. The hitch pins are then very precisely marked and the
paper is securely anchored so it can be stretched across the bridge pins so
they can be marked with the sandpaper produced holes, just like the
hitches. The bridge pins can also be marked with a regular old graphite
carpenter's pencil, as can the agraffes, since actual holes aren't required
to locate the pin positions, and further distortion of the paper is
eliminated if one is making a full length hitch-to-agraffe pattern. A
cleaner rubbing can be obtained at the bridge pins by lightly pressing down
on the paper over the pins with a thumb before using the pencil. Same with
the agraffes. I see no reason the string maker can't locate the hitches as
accurately, and with as little trouble, from a larger hole representing the
bottom of the hitch, as he can from a small hole representing the top of a
hitch set at an unknown angle. But then, as I said, I'm not a string maker.

I've never gotten a hint from any other string maker that this is a problem.

Ron N