![\"York](\"http:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/York-pepermint-patties.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAndrea from Lancaster and I made plans to meet at the Lancaster Central Market for lunch.<\/p>\n I stopped in to the Tourism Office at the market when I arrived, and I found out about the Peppermint Patties. I also found out that they are now made in Mexico.<\/p>\n I tried to get the woman at the information desk to give me an idea of what to do on a day in York. I hate to say that she seemed baffled by the question, but I guess York isn’t the tourism mecca that Lancaster is. She gave me a brochure and suggested that I might like to take a tour of a company in the county.<\/p>\n I thanked her, got a free mug full of swag for signing up for a newsletter and set out to wait for Andrea.<\/p>\n The York Central Market is more of a food court these days than the Market in Lancaster.<\/p>\n While I was waiting, I picked out a tour that I fought would be interesting and I called to see if they were giving tours today. I was in luck. Bluett Brothers Violins had a tour at 3:00 that afternoon.<\/p>\n Andrea got through the traffic and we finally made got together. We had a wonderful lunch of African food and chatted away like old friends. All too soon, though, our time together came to an end. \u00a0I hope I make it back that way again sometime.<\/p>\n I had a little time to kill, so I decided to look around.<\/p>\n I imagine that these came from an Italian restaurant.<\/p>\n And dig that cool web inside!<\/p>\n Who knew that York was Muscletown USA? Bob Hoffman founded York Barbell Corporation in 1932. He is hailed as the father or weightlifting and helped to popularize the bodybuilding movement.<\/p>\n The time for the tour rolled around and I showed up at the company.<\/p>\n Mark Bluett, Master Luthier, met me at the door with a big smile.<\/p>\n He began the tour by telling us that he worked on any sort of stringed instrument. In addition to building new instruments, he also repaired them.<\/p>\n He has two full-time apprentices and a couple part time ones that pay to learn. The one part time apprentice there was working on building his own mandolin.<\/p>\n Mark told us that he has a supply of wood drying that he bought in 1967. He says that he has enough stored to make more than four times the violins he can make in \u00a0his lifetime.<\/p>\n Maple is on the back of the violins, violas and cellos and they are scraped to five different thicknesses.<\/p>\n The wood on the sides and tops is spruce.<\/p>\n Mandolins have a lot more pressure on them than violins. There is 137 pounds of pressure on a mandolin \u00a0as opposed to 67 pounds on a violin.<\/p>\n He used to make bows, but found them boring. Now he will repair them, and keeps a stock of horse hair on hand for when he needs it.<\/p>\n The horse hair he uses comes from Siberia. It is from a line of horses that have been specially bred for the last 300 years for making violin bows.<\/p>\n Repair is a large part of his business, too.<\/p>\n He told us that each one of those ridges is a separate gore and that there is a band of rosewood between each gore. What incredibly detailed work!<\/p>\n He finished off the tour by showing us some of his recent instruments.<\/p>\n He told us that this is built on a scale of one one centimeter to one inch. It’s playable, if your fingers are small enough.<\/p>\n If the case is worth $1200, I can’t imagine what the instruments are worth.<\/p>\n And then it was time to head back to Flo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you know York Peppermint Patties came from York, Pennsylvania? I didn’t! Andrea from Lancaster and I made plans to meet at the Lancaster Central Market for lunch. I stopped in to the Tourism Office at the market when I arrived, and I found out about the Peppermint Patties. I also found out that they … Continue reading York – Get the Sensation!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,213,215,214],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bluett-brothers-violins","tag-york","tag-york-central-market","tag-york-peppermint-patties","post_format-post-format-chat"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1879,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.towingsilver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>