Who says you can't take 'em with you?

Kristin and I made this sweet bow holder out of 3" PVC pipe, lined with velvet and a moisture-blocking screw-top lid. Now I have a safe way to transport the bows to my mentor's studio, the local violin shop, and everywhere inbetween.

The frog starts hopping!

For Christmas, Kristin gave me a 12-inch piece of Gaboon Ebony from Woodcraft. I cut off a two-inch piece so I had a little block of wood that looked like a cool, black building block. I tapered the sides just a bit and took a picture of it (above).

It was a little higher than the 21mm it was supposed to be, so I put it sideways in my vise and cut it down to the right size with a coping saw.

I took about 10 breaks on these first two cutting jobs because the wood is SO hard, it takes forever to cut through it!

Almost there . . .

Whew, that took way too long! Next, I used my woodcarving knives and files (another Christmas present) and filed a half-circle for the metal ferrule, hollowed out the front part of the frog to be a lopsided-circle shape (a "handmade-look" tip from my mentor), and then started filing the groove on top where the stick will rest.

Next Steps

Bow in the vise for side planing.

Cutting the angle for the faceplate.

Front contours of the head are carved.

Width and height are brought within 1mm of finished dimensions. Corners are now planed/scraped away to create an octagon shape to the stick.

Bow #3

Me and my special little apprentice, Mary.

Happy New Year - 2010!!!

I'm now working on bow #3 . #1 cracked during cambering. #2 was Kristin's 2009 Christmas present. It played really well when I first gave it to her Christmas morning, but then I thinned out the stick to more traditional proportions and it became too flexible. I didn't think of it at the time, but the Bubinga wood I used on #2 is a little less dense than the traditional pernambuco wood, so it needed a little bit more thickness to keep the expected tension on the hair without bending away all the camber. Now that I've thinned it out, the hair doesn't get tight enough to play on until the stick is bent totally straight, which means the hair is too far from the stick and it feels wobbly. Also, somehow the horse hair became all mangled and twisted when I took the frog off the stick to work on thinning it out. Oh well, it does still play and sounds lovely (thanks to Kristin's great skills)!

So, now I'm on to bow #3. I'm really excited because I'll apply all the knowledge I've gained on my first two Bubinga bows toward a bow made out of the right kind of wood - Pernambuco. I cut a piece off of the stick last night and dropped it into water. The saying goes that if it sinks, that's cause to rejoice. Well, it sank right to the bottom of the cup!!!

I'm also going to make my own frog for this bow (Bolander says you can't call yourself a bowmaker unless you make your own frogs). I'll be more careful about not sanding down the button end of the stick. I'm going to practice with the thumb leather on other scraps of wood until I get it just right. I'll use precut ebony liner on the tip, and make the tip even narrower than previous bows. And, I'm going to start the wrapping a good inch or two above where I started on bow #2. All that should add up to somethin' special for Kristin.