No, it is you that is confused... IF the shroud image is unbleached linen because it was protected from exposure to the sun, then the image would be contiguous throughout as unbleached linen... it is NOT. Your point and Wilson's contention is that it is the non-image portion of the shroud that was changed to LEAVE the image behind in UN-CHANGED linen... which would therefore be contiguous. The image on the Shroud is where the change occurred... not on the un-imaged areas.
The other point to be made is that this article is talking about the linen threads, before being woven into a cloth, being sun bleached as hanks, rather than the cloth being sun bleached as a whole after weaving. The patterning is an artifact of using hanks that were differently bleached in different areas of weaving...
In addition, Math, we know from the Shroud's history that it was often exposed to the sun, sometimes for days on end, as pilgrims came to see it. If the image were as you and Wilson contend mere bleaching, such exposure would have obliterated the image.
Under the extremely thin (100th the thickness of a human hair) image layer in the image areas, the linen of the shroud is essentially identical image area to non-image areas with no color differentiation other than what is inherently there. In other words, if you take an image thread and a non-image thread and remove the image layer, the threads are identical... which completely negates the "bleaching" theory. As you pointed out, if the linen is left in the sun long enough, it bleaches "all the way through to the back" and that would include inside the threads and fibers.
A textile analysis of Wilson's shrouds has not been made yet. Your assertion that it's different is certainly speculation. Obviously, it will be necessary to examine the fibers, taking into account the effects of time experienced by the original shroud.
No, it has not. But it is unnecessary. Wilson claims it is bleaching... but a Maillard Reaction is not caused by bleaching... it requires other chemicals. Since the shroud image is not made of non-bleached linen, there is no need to examine Wilson's bleached linin copies.
I appreciate your study of the Shroud and your posts.
The Maillard reaction theory is still just a theory, and an incomplete one at that. The clarity and vertical collimation of the shroud image have not been fully explained by laws of gaseous diffusion, despite the mentions of Brownian motion and whatever else. Has anyone attempted to replicate the linen and create a reasonable image with an amine-derivative gas point source?
However, even if a Maillard reaction explains the image color, what’s to say the entire shroud wasn’t uniformly darkened at some time by exposure to a gas whether intentionally or not? Wilson’s forger could have then bleached the shroud as he described, leaving behind a Maillard reaction- produced image. Are there other natural sources of an appropriate gas other than rotting corpses?
If Wilson’s admittedly far-fetched theory of a crusader robbing an old tomb for the shroud has any merit, such a shroud may have indeed been darkened by the amine gases within the tomb. Whether or not that shroud had been in direct contact with a corpse, a long exposure to the diffuse gases in an enclosed tomb could have darkened the entire shroud.
Then there are the wrinkles on the shroud, which appear in photographs to be colored the same as the image, only darker. If Wilson is right, these creases pre-dated the image formation, and thus shaded the shroud from bleaching along the crease lines. The rest of the image would have faded a little over time with some sun exposure, but the wrinkles would have maintained their darker color as you see today. Did the shroud researchers study the wrinkle threads and compare their properties to the image-bearing threads?
On the other hand, the second face on the back of the shroud requires explanation if Wilson’s theory is to hold up. Also, what about the blood stains? It has been reported that there was no image color to the fibers beneath the bloodstains. How true is this and how thoroughly were the bloodstains checked for this? It is very difficult to imagine how the shadow image forger could have left the blood sites unshaded for the sun-bleaching stage, to be filled in later with blood. And very unlikely that a forger would do that.
It seems too soon to dismiss Wilson’s theory but much more work is needed on it yet.