A couple of weeks ago or so I did whatever repairs I could on the bow that came with the violin Aryn sent me, and then I dropped it off with the archetier for what I couldn't fix on my own. Today I went to pick it up!
I had hopes that this would be a nice old German bow, but it is a 'student model', meaning the snobs with monocles turn their noses up to it because it's made of inferior wood and often not very well made, though the craftsmanship on this bow leaves nothing to wish for! Regardless, it was an old bow that needed my help! So I got it all fixed up!
As you can barely see on this picture I took when I first got the package, the bow is crummy, the hair is all worn and broken and cruddy, the lapping and leather were coming apart.
There was also a repaired crack by the screw, and a repaired broken tip. The crack by the screw seemed to be properly closed, if perhaps a bit sloppy (the archetier pointed that out), but the repair at the tip was atrocious. I can't re-hair bows, but I sure can undo a crappy fix and restore it properly!
The tip on this bow happens to be ivory, which was very good because I could use solvents without dissolving the tip too (a plastic tip wouldn't have survived the solvents I used). So after carefully swabbing with a cotton-swab and solvent for about 2 hours, I managed to undo the old repair job, then I cleaned it all up, and re-glued the parts properly and neatly:
That was as far as I could go. I could have touched-up the varnish but figured better let the archetier do that too. I've only done a French Polish twice, he's done it countless times.
So the bow was done yesterday and I went to pick it up today! It looks beautiful, with fresh new hair, new leather grip, and touched-up varnish. It was slightly warped once under tension, but he also corrected that (3 times, he said!).
Because it's a simpleton pedestrian student bow, we went with a simple, affordable double-leather fix: The leather grip and leather lapping instead of the traditional silver wire for the lapping. And he cleaned up the nickel-silver bits too.
Being a student bow doesn't mean it is a bad bow, but it is likely to have deficiencies with advanced techniques, and also the market value of it is only so much, so it's generally unwise to spend on it more than what it's worth, even if I have no intention of selling it.
...and look at that beautiful tip, all varnished again (with my restoration job too!):
I put it to the test when I got home. This is an interesting bow. I still need my teacher to give her opinion on it, because she can do all the crazy things I'm nowhere near able to do to really put it to the test, but I find it has some nice characteristics, and some that would take some getting used to. First, it's very, very light! The balance is just right but I'm used to a slightly heavier bow. And because these things are fickle, I tried it on all my fiddles, and amusingly, the one I liked it the least with was the violin Aryn sent, the one it was paired with to begin with!
The overall sound I got from it was generally strong and sharp, and I couldn't get good staccato with it but again I'm just a beginner still. My teacher will be the final judge on its quality! As far as personal preference goes, it still didn't beat my best bow, though. I'm putting it as my second-best for now. Maybe it will grow on me, but the good bow has been difficult to beat! I even like mine better than I like my teacher's and she has a really good and expensive one!
